


but many times, we were happy too

by futuredescending



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alpha Harry, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Beta Eggsy, Blood and Gore, Dark Kingsman Block Party, Depression, Gang Rape, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Roles, Handmaid's Tale AU, Harry Hart Lives, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Eggsy, Well this is a fun list of tags, omega slavery elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 05:16:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6502123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuredescending/pseuds/futuredescending
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Unfortunately, there’s more bad news," Merlin tells him. "The table had to deliberate on your future here at Kingsman given recent developments. Even with Galahad, Percival, and Lancelot’s dissenting votes, the motion was passed: you’re to be registered as a full omega in central records and subsequently stripped of your title.”</p><p>After an incident at a facility that's been experimenting on human betas goes tits up, Eggsy finds himself having to live in a harsh new reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just be a little occasional side writing, she said. It'll be fun, she said.
> 
> Based on [this DKBP prompt](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6346063/chapters/14546869), which grabbed my imagination and wouldn't let go because the implications of the fallout were too tempting to explore. Three days later, this pretty much came out.
> 
> I have never written an a/b/o fic before. I honestly never thought I would, but here we are.
> 
> All titles come from the gorgeous work of [Nikka Ursula](http://cardiamachina.co.vu/tagged/my%20poetry).

It’s the smell that hits him first, astringent and rank: omega and fear. For Eggsy to have even picked up on it at all means there are a lot of omegas behind that seemingly innocuous door he now faces, and they are beyond terrified.

He’s glad it’s him here now though, and not Harry, who’s over in the other half of the compound. Doesn’t know how Harry would react to this, what sorts of baser alpha instincts such a condensed, undiluted scent would stir up in him despite decades of training and seemingly airtight control.

So Eggsy just breathes through his mouth, readies his gun, and slowly turns the handle, yanking the door open and swiftly moving into a 180 sweep for immediate threats. Nothing. He let’s himself fully take in the room, clinical, white, windowless, and the realisation of what he sees almost makes him want to back right the fuck out.

They’re in cages, too skinny and pale faced and stinking of their own filth and that hair raising fear, so much worse now that he’s in the thick of it. Their eyes are all sunken in the way they get with malnutrition, bellies bloated, moans and cries creaking from them like old doors. Breathing through his mouth doesn’t seem to do anything beyond coating the inside of his throat with something oily and repulsive, making him gag.

 _Gawain!_ Merlin suddenly barks in his ear, and just like that Eggsy snaps back to himself, realises his pulse has gone through the roof, still beating in his ears, with a thin sheen of sweat broken out across his skin.

“Here, Merlin,” he says, swallowing back the bile suddenly flooded his mouth, because he’s got to get a fucking grip. “Twelve, no, thirteen of them. Don’t look too good neither, Jesus, who would fucking do this? They—”

Something snatches at his ankle and almost trips him up. Eggsy lashes out by instinct, trying to kick at the thing that ensnares him, turning his pistol on it—

It’s one of the omegas, he realises, trying to calm the second spike of adrenaline. Her eyes are bright with clarity, unerringly focused on his. “They’ll get you too,” she whispers.

He doesn’t know why those words make him shiver, but they do. The way she says it, her gaze isn’t even hazy with fear, just dread and despair, knowing _too much_. Like she’s looked into his mind and seen his future.

 _Eighteen guards heading your way, Gawain. Three minutes out. Get out of there now_ , Merlin warns.

“What? I can’t just leave them! Merlin, they’re—”

 _There’s nothing you can do for them now, lad._ There’s just the slightest hint of something softer in Merlin’s voice. Understanding, maybe, harsh as his words are. _Galahad’s reported in and we’ve got what we came for. Time to head out. Proceed to the rendezvous point to await extraction._

But Eggsy can’t. He _can’t_ just abandon them to their fate like that. Their faces. Their stink of terror. “Merlin….”

_If you don’t start moving right now, Gawain, I’ll put you on bedpan duty in medical for the next year and a half, now move!_

Merlin’s voice is like a whip snapping in his ear, not yelling, but so wholly commanding that Eggsy keeps wondering if he ain’t secretly an alpha himself (and why he wouldn’t want the world as his oyster, Eggsy couldn’t even begin to fucking fathom). Nonetheless, Eggsy finds himself obeying without further protest, legs already taking him out of that hell hole and running down the corridor without conscious thought.

He tries to pull up a mental blueprint of the facility layout he’s memorised. Left here. Two rights. Shooting at anyone with a gun aimed at him. He takes the stairs three at a time, then simply launches himself up the next flight by grabbing onto the rails and swinging himself over, clearing the banister and throwing an elbow into a guard’s face before ripping the gun from his hands and taking out three more approaching from above.

He almost makes it.

He sees the solid metal door to the roof with its bright red Exit sign shining like salvation, knows that’s where Harry and their helicopter will be, can hear the thudding of the blades whooping through the air. It’s just one more flight of stairs away.

Something stings his neck.

Eggsy turns and immediately rips the thing out, sees a nearly drained syringe dart in his hand with the dregs of some dark green liquid. “Shit!”

_Gawain, keep mov—_

But the world suddenly goes sickeningly blurry and he’s dizzy, head all heavy and he can’t possibly hold it up anymore. Eggsy finds himself stumbling, finding nothing under his feet, and then tumbling back down the stairs, ending in a crumpled heap at the landing.

He ain’t quite out of it yet, but there’s black darkening the edges of his vision and everything’s starting to tunnel. “Fuck, I’m done for,” he thinks he says, but his voice sounds slurred and distant, like he’s had one too many.

There’s more guards coming, black smears running up the stairs and from down the hall of the floor he’s landed on. Eggsy tries to pick himself up, staggering into the wall, but managing to keep himself upright. He’s somehow still miraculously holding his gun, which he raises with a shaky hand, picks two of them off before he becomes too uncoordinated and has to drop his whole arm, gun falling from his numb fingers.

Everything in his body feels heavy, like gravity’s increased a hundredfold, and hot, a feeling that only seems to grow, like he’s been put in a vat of water slowly set to boil over a fire. He’s sweating. His shirt’s sticking to his clammy skin. It’s so, so hot, and the guards keep coming. Angry, metallic-smelling alphas.

Eggsy winds his arm back to throw a punch, but misses by a wide mile, stumbles into another guard who snarls in his face, so he headbutts him and then pushes him away, grabbing onto the next guard within reach and getting a good lick in with his fist, feels the satisfying sensation of cartilage snapping beneath his knuckles.

Except he’s lost all sense of orientation or which way is even up and he soon ends up falling right on his arse to the floor, which is blessedly hard and solid in a world that won’t stop swaying. It gives him enough relief to rally, he still fights, claps his heels together ( _Dorothy, there’s no place like fucking home_ , he hysterically thinks) to engage the poison-laced blade in his oxfords, then sweeps his leg out, slicing deadly cuts into anyone who dares get within reach. If he’s going down, he’s gonna take down as many of these fuckers with him. At least give Harry and the helicopter enough time to make a clean escape.

He smells blood and sweat and poison and alpha fury, and beneath it all, a growing sweet blossom scent that reminds him of funeral flowers. It’s light and airy, then thick and cloying, overwhelming all the other scents, syrupy in his nostrils, in his veins, boiling his blood.

He knows that scent, remembers it from that time in school when the girl next to him, who had been peaky all morning, suddenly cried out and fell out of her seat, driving all the pubescent alphas in the room absolutely fucking barmy and forcing nearly six teachers to drag them all out into the hall. Eggsy can distinctly remember one of the alphas shoving a teacher clear across the room in his rage.

 _Went into heat_ , he overheard the other kids whispering later, and from that day on, he never saw the poor girl again, because omegas didn’t need more schooling once they presented and their purpose became clear.

He knows that scent, because he smells it now, and yet he can’t understand, can’t understand because he left all the omegas behind, abandoned them to their fates and they were too sick anyway to go into heat, there shouldn’t be that smell and he shouldn’t feel like he’s fucking boiling alive and he shouldn’t be, can’t possibly be—

One of the guards raises the butt of his gun, Eggsy sees it blearily, but he can no longer think of what he should be doing to fix it.

The gun comes down across his skull and the darkness crowding his vision swallows him up whole.

 

_____

 

_—wain! Gawain! Eggsy!_

He comes to, and there’s a heavy, rocking weight on him, crushing him, he can barely breathe. The weight’s trying to grind him into the floor and it’s snarling in his ear and slobbering at his neck and an earthy, sharp iron-laced alpha scent envelops him, chokes him.

He can’t escape, suddenly feels the sharp spiking pain in his arse, because the alpha’s inside him, big cock thrusting wildly up into him, splitting him open, and it hurts, oh god, it hurts. Eggsy cries out, gurgles with the agony of it, and tries to claw at the alpha’s fucking face, but the fucker just grabs hold of his wrists in a bone grinding grip and shoves Eggsy’s hands back onto the floor, using them as leverage to drive himself even deeper into him.

Eggsy sobs, turns his head away from that feral red face, and finds a world gone tits up. The guards have all gone and turned on each other, snarling and biting and clawing, tearing at each other’s clothes, hair, and skin with their own fucking hands and teeth, like they’ve forgotten how to use their weapons, just want to feel the satisfaction of rending each other limb from limb with their own brute strength. The air’s thick with their scents, battling for dominance, like the worst gym changing room that hasn’t been cleaned for a decade. It’s a full out fucking war.

He can’t move, pinned to the floor beneath this alpha by his hands and his wildly pistoning cock that’s moving so slickly in and out of his arse, can’t do anything but cry and moan and pant and feel that cock moving inside him like a writhing eel.

And then the alpha’s ripped off of him, cock being yanked out painfully with its swelling base tearing at his rim. Eggsy rolls to his front, realises he hasn’t got anything on below the waist and the cold floor does nothing for the heat that still rolls through him like a backdraft, looks over his shoulder to see another alpha’s got his attacker by the throat with his fucking teeth. The alpha pulls his head back, and with it comes the other’s whole esophagus, dangling from his mouth like bloody strings.

The sight of it, so base and primitive, terrifies him, sends him scrambling back, trying to find safety in the chaos around him, but he’s stopped by the alpha throwing himself onto his back, knocking the air from his lungs. The alpha’s hard cock is already leaking, dragging a wet line across the insides of his thighs and Eggsy shudders, suddenly unable to move.

He feels the alpha drag his hips up until he’s on his knees, arse presented to the air, feels the alpha line himself up against his hole, blunt head already too big, he can’t possibly fit without it going to hurt, but the alpha shoves in with one long, forceful thrust anyway, and Eggsy’s mouth falls open in a soundless scream.

The alpha’s fucking him so hard, Eggsy feels himself getting shoved across the floor with each thrust, fingers scrabbling out in front of him, clawing at the smooth linoleum, fingernails broken off and bloody.

When that alpha’s dragged off of him too, Eggsy just collapses forward, wants to curl up in on himself, but more hands drag him back into the fray, unfurl him, spread his legs wide and then spear him on their cocks too until the next alpha to come along knocks them out.

Things become blessedly hazy after a while.

Distantly, he’s still aware of what’s happening, but it’s like he’s outside his body, looking down on himself. He sees all the warring alphas in the room, though many have been knocked out or killed already, sees another one on top of him now, brutally fucking him, going at it long enough to start the beginnings of a knot, until that one too, gets his neck snapped by yet another enraged alpha.

He hears himself make a sound he’s never heard himself make, a kind of whine, thrusting his hips up abortively, as the blood-smeared cock is ripped out of his body, only idly notes all the blood and another ample pink-tinged jelly-like substance on his thighs and understands much of it to be his own.

Hears a distant familiar _Eggsy! Eggsy it’s going to be alright. Help is coming. Oh Jesus. Help is coming, lad…._

The whole floor’s slick with blood and viscera now, and the next alpha to fuck Eggsy slips and slides his knees in it even as his hips keep moving of their own volition, and he falls onto Eggsy more often than not, but doesn’t pause, like he’s trying to climb into him.

And Eggsy’s stopped trying to push them off, to fight them. When his hands reach out, it’s to grab and keep them, to shove their heads down towards his extended neck, in a need so consuming, it blots out all other thoughts and desires in his mind.

He needs it, it’s burning in his gut. Fuck him, knot him, breed him, _bite_ him.

He’s so far gone, he barely registers the shot ring out, hot blood and brain matter raining down across his face, and the alpha on top of him turning from a rutting, writhing mass to a literally dead one. Barely hears the next shots, in quick, rapid fire succession, each swiftly followed by the hollow thud of bodies dropping to the floor. The gunpowder intermixes with all the blood and alpha scent, underlines it, and with it, something new, something infinitely more dangerous and overwhelming than anything Eggsy’s ever smelled before, something the equally feral creature inside of him suddenly perks up and becomes attuned to.

The dead body crushing him, still inside him, is torn away, and Eggsy barely feels the pain of the separation, so caught up is he in the presence, the full, most powerful _existence_ , of Harry Hart.

 

_____

 

“Eggsy,” Harry says, crouching down beside him and looking at him with concern. “Can you understand me? Eggsy?”

Yes, there’s a part of him that can, distantly. It’s the part of him that feels a thrill every time he sees Harry, that stayed with him by his bedside after V-Day for weeks while Harry remained in a medical coma. That sneaks glances at him when he thinks Harry isn’t looking, even tries to subtly lean in and inhale his scent even with his average beta senses. It’s the part of him that just relishes the chance to be close to Harry, to linger in his vicinity, because he nearly lost Harry once, and now he can’t bear the thought of ever losing him again.

But the larger part of him now is being controlled by a primal force that’s been stoked awake, and it’s on fire and churning and he can taste blood on his tongue and iron in his nose.

Harry is an alpha, but more importantly, he’s _the_ alpha. The one left standing, the one who defeated them all, and Eggsy wants. _Needs._

“Eggsy,” Harry repeats, but doesn’t get the chance to ask again, because Eggsy’s hand reaches out and snatches Harry by his tie, using it as a handhold to launch himself up and forcefully shove Harry down onto the floor so Eggsy can straddle him.

He must have taken Harry by surprise, because for a few moments, all Harry can do is look up at him, stricken. “What do you think you’re doing? Eggsy, what—”

The rest of Harry’s words get caught in throat as his eyes widen in alarm and his nostrils flare. He must smell it now, Eggsy’s scent. His ripe, fertile scent just waiting to be fucked. Eggsy grinds down on Harry’s hardening cock, gets the front of his trousers all wet with the slick that’s now gushing out of him.

Harry moans, choked off like he can’t help himself, gripping Eggsy’s hips and trying to hold him still, even though he’s already begun to thrust up, his body already five steps ahead of him. “Eggsy. No. We can’t. You’re not yourself. We can’t. You’re…how…?”

His words mean nothing to Eggsy now, not when he can feel Harry’s answering scent rising up, curling alongside Eggsy’s, acknowledging that readiness, ready to take and fulfill. He shuts Harry up by leaning down to kiss him instead, because he vaguely recalls it’s a thing civilised people like Harry like to do. Except he’s so mindless with lust right now, that it’s more a smear of lips and tongue, teeth scraping along Harry’s lower lip and then the edge of his jaw, his neck.

Harry’s saying some more words.

“Wait—”

“Slow down!”

“We can’t—”

“Not here…”

“Eggsy, I—”

But then Eggsy just swallows them all up when he sucks on Harry’s tongue, and finally, finally, he feels Harry’s body give up, feels the way he suddenly stops trying to hold Eggsy back and just tries to hold him closer.

When it's Eggsy who pulls back, there’s a sharp hunger aflame in Harry’s eyes. The very air’s changed into something predatory, all iron and steel, and Eggsy knows Harry’s now caught up in it just like all those other alphas, just as he is.

He’s shoved onto his back, right on the bloody floor, and Harry’s on him, all snarls and teeth and might. His fingers shove into Eggsy’s arse as if trying to scoop out all the sub-par pre-come left in there by other alphas, encouraging more slick to coat his hole and ease their mating. There’s an aching soreness lingering down there, but it sings on the crest of something delicious that makes Eggsy arch his back and hiss.

Harry practically rips off his own trousers and pants to get his leaking cock out, and it’s as mouth-wateringly huge as any alpha’s cock ought to be. It’s going to fuck him so good and so hard, he’ll practically feel it in his throat. Eggsy wants it, wants to be filled up and bred on Harry’s cock. Harry’s an alpha, his alpha, and when he forces Eggsy’s knees up to his chest, practically bends him in half, and slides in with one relentless, merciless thrust, Eggsy arches his neck and immediately offers it up to him with a whine.

There’s a moment where Eggsy fears Harry isn’t going to take what’s being offered to him, that he’s not going to give Eggsy what he so desperately needs, even as Harry has started fucking into him in sharp, forceful thrusts that feel like his gut is being punched from the inside. He’d cry if he weren’t already moaning and gasping, his mouth still falling and twisting open, trying to remember how to verbalise words, failing, and just whining some more. But if he could speak, the only things that would fall from his lips would be _fuck me, breed me, fuck me, bite me, bite me, take me, alpha, alpha, alpha_.

Some part of Harry must hear those voiceless pleas, because the next thing Eggsy knows is the sharp horrendous pain of teeth at his neck, of Harry biting down and breaking through skin, right into his bonding gland, flooding his system with his own saliva and imprinting himself onto Eggsy’s DNA. The bite sends liquid fire and pleasure skyrocketing through his body, until Eggsy cries out and comes, Harry continuing to fuck him all through it, prolonging the euphoric sensations.

He’s slow to come down, with Harry thrusting into him, his knot starting to swell and grow bigger at each pass, starting to catch on his rim with each pull back. It hurts each time, and the euphoria of his own orgasm’s starting to taper off, wearing down the barrier between the pleasure and outright agony. He’s starting to feel oversensitised, his neck feels like it’s been shredded, but he can’t do much more than wince and bear down on Harry’s cock until Harry shoves in deeply one more time, forcing his swollen knot past Eggsy’s rim and into him as far as he can drive it, tries to pull back again and can’t, he’s tied in.

The lock seems to trigger something in Harry, sets him off into his own climax, because Harry groans and bites back down on the bloody mess he’s already made of Eggsy’s neck again, triggering another wave of pleasure through Eggsy’s body and making all the other discomforts recede once more.

Eggsy doesn’t know how long it goes on for, but this one seems to last so much longer than the first. Maybe it’s the way Harry’s now fully knotted to him in addition to being bonded to him, giving his body what it needs, pumping torrent after torrent of come into him, filling him, until Eggsy’s good and bred and, most importantly, Harry’s forever.

 

_____

 

It’s only when he’s back in the safe and secure confines of Kingsman’s medical ward, after he’s been given an icer to cut his heat short, that Eggsy can reclaim his right mind again, and the magnitude of everything that happened hits him with the force of an imploding building.

Up until then, no one could get a reaction out of Eggsy at all. Somewhere in between Harry’s knot in his arse and teeth at his throat and the actual cold realisation of his current situation, they were rescued, pulled out of that horror facility and transported straight to HQ.

Somewhere in there, Eggsy was treated by Kingsman’s medical staff: blood drawn, examined for internal bleeding, determined whether or not he needed to be stitched up, injuries seen to and dressed, cleaned up of all the blood and semen and other bodily fluids, drugged up to the gills, and left to rest.

Somewhere in there, or all during, Harry did not leave his side, and no one dared try to separate him from his newly made mate for the very real fear of getting their faces ripped off, and when they leave Eggsy alone to sleep, Harry curls up next to him and all around him on the bed, a solid, secure presence that manages to both soothe and horrify him.

Eggsy reclaims his right mind, understands what has happened to him, and wants to cry out, wants to shove Harry away from him, wants to pull him close and breathe him in. Wants to scream and scream and never stop.

But the drugs start to hit his system hard, and his eyes can’t stay open anymore and his whole body falls under the spell of medication, letting him escape the nightmare, for just a little while.

 

_____

 

“Something in the substance you were injected with permanently altered your DNA into full omega expression,” is what Roxy recounts to him about what was said during the meeting Merlin had with the table.

Harry was also there, but through his glasses only, because he still refused to leave Eggsy’s side, at least not until Merlin later threatened to geld him and he finally relented in going off to shower and rest so long as Eggsy wasn’t left alone.

“Which seems to lend credence to earlier research on beta DNA having more…undeveloped characteristics than their alpha and omega counterparts.” Roxy grimaces with distaste, and Eggsy can’t help but commiserate. They were the only two betas in the Lancelot round and had grown close when the they had to prove to a room of puffed up, arrogant alphas that betas could be just as good as them if not better. Even after they became successful Kingsman agents in their own right, two of the organisation’s very best in fact, they often found themselves having to work harder than their fellow alpha agents just to be accorded the same level of respect.

“So I’ve been given some kind of forced chemical dynamic change?” Eggsy asks. It’s the first time he’s spoken in days and his voice is rough and croaky with disuse.

Roxy can only grimly nod. “And a very successful one at that. Your DNA results have come back and you’re completely, one hundred percent omega, Eggsy.”

“No, I’m fucking _not_.”

“Biologically speaking now, you are,” she amends. “The formula seems to incite an ultra condensed omega heat which helped to trigger a swift period of rapid growth and development, akin to years worth of puberty in the span of minutes. No one’s seen anything like it. The formula doesn’t always transition a beta into an omega. It’s dynamic neutral, only aiming to trigger whatever expression is already lying dormant in a beta’s DNA. It could very well have been an alpha rut.”

“So what you’re saying is that I was supposed to have been an omega but my body just decided to stop developing before that could happen and now this thing’s gone and given it the final push it needed.” Like Eggsy was incomplete until now, underdeveloped. Unwhole.

“No, Eggsy,” Roxy says, looking horrified. “It’s not that simple. Nature doesn’t work like that. There’s a sizeable and growing population of betas in this world for a reason, and it isn’t because we developed wrong or not at all. In fact, we’re the fastest growing demographic. Nature has deemed us evolutionarily successful, and it’s alphas and omegas who have the vestigial anatomy and physiology, if anything. We’re the future, Eggsy.”

“You’re the future, Rox,” Eggsy says, voice cracking. “Looks like I got picked off from the herd and dragged back to the Stone Ages.”

“Oh Eggsy,” Roxy says, and draws him against her to hold. Unlike with anyone else but Harry, Eggsy finds it safe to curl up in her arms and allow her touch. “We’ll get through this. We’ve already had to overcome so much. We won’t let this one defeat us now.”

 

_____

 

But it’s not so simple.

Merlin’s grim faced and looks even more exhausted and stressed than he usually does when Eggsy sees him next. Worse still is the fact that he can’t seem to meet Eggsy’s eyes.

“We tried, Eggsy. We’ve gone over the formula and all the samples from the compound. All the notes and data. I’m afraid the change is irreversible, because it already used what was there. There’s no going back.”

“Bullshit,” Eggsy refutes, almost conversationally. “Our…our technology is at least twenty years ahead of the market. We’re fucking spies, mate. Our bespoke suits are fucking bullet proof, our lighters are grenades, and we got poison pens, and you’re telling me we can’t fix this? This thing happened to me in like two seconds. Two seconds! And now you’re telling me that can’t be changed?”

“You know just as well as I that a lot can happen in even two seconds,” Merlin says. “Unfortunately, there’s more bad news. The table had to deliberate on your future here at Kingsman given recent developments. Even with Galahad, Percival, and Lancelot’s dissenting votes, the motion was passed: you’re to be registered as a full omega in central records and subsequently stripped of your title.”

It’s like a bomb’s detonated, and Eggsy’s stunned. He feels the ringing in his ears, the blood in his veins freeze up, even as Merlin continues.

“All your possessions and legal status are to be transferred to your alpha on record, which will be your mate, unless you wish to dissolve the bond. Harry’s consented to the dissolution if you wish to do so,” because omegas can’t dissolve bonds without their alpha’s permission even though the reverse isn’t true, “but know that if you choose to do that, your guardianship will have to be transferred to your next closest alpha kin on record, which happens to be your mother’s new alpha, a Mr Thomas Gordon Richardson.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” is all he can think to say and as soon as he does, his anger explodes, white hot. “I’m not a fucking omega, Merlin! I didn’t choose this! This just happened and you’re gonna punish me for it? Like I’ve suddenly become some helpless fucking child that can no longer take care of himself? What the fuck do you think is going on here?”

“Eggsy—”

“No! Fucking no! I do not accept this, you fucking bastard. You’re all fucking posh alpha bastards, thinking you’re better than us!” he shouts, pacing about his room, wanting to pick up things and throw them at Merlin, break anything that can be broken, even though it’s not actually Merlin’s fault, Merlin who didn’t get to vote, who wasn’t even an alpha. “You can’t do this to me. I worked hard to get here and you’re not going to just take it away because of some stupid chemical! This don’t change who I am! I’m still a beta! I’m still a Kingsman! I’m still Gawain!”

“No,” Merlin says quietly, “You’re not, Eggsy. Not anymore.”

This soft refutation saps the wind from his sails. Merlin just looks so sad and defeated, and Eggsy’s got fucking tears now streaming down his face, already proving himself to be the hysterical little omega society thinks he is. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now? This is my life, Merlin. You’ve just ended it.”

And oh, if words were weapons, that one would have done Merlin in. He’s never seen the older man flinch from anything anyone’s ever said to him, but he practically withers before Eggsy now. “You can choose to live with Harry, or you can return to your mother and her—”

“Like fucking hell I am,” Eggsy snarls. “Ain’t no fucking way I’m letting some other alpha bastard I don’t know get to have any say over me again.”

“Then you keep the bond with Harry. You move in with him and come under his, and by extension, the rest of Kingsman’s resources and protection.” Merlin sighs. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, and how I wish none of this had happened. If I had known…if I had known what they were doing to betas in that facility, I’d never have let you go in. But, there are worse fates—and mates—to have, Eggsy, and if I’m not mistaken, this isn’t a choice that’s entirely unwelcome.”

It’s no choice at all, Eggsy wants to point out, but he’s suddenly just so tired. And in shock again. His whole world’s been upended and this time it’s left him with even less than before, because at least when Lee died, Eggsy only lost a father and the material support he brought to his family, and when Harry almost died, Eggsy would have only lost his heart. Now Eggsy’s lost the career he loves, the respect of his colleagues, and control over his own selfhood, legally, physically, and culturally.

Omegas have got a shit time of it in Great Britain, worse still after V-Day when so many of them were killed off and even more restrictions were passed on the few who were left. He had felt bad for them before, his heart broke for his own mum on a routine basis for all the shit she’d been through at the hands of the alphas she’d been bonded off to, but the crux of it had still felt so distant and removed from his own lived experience. He may have found himself getting looked down upon by other alphas as well, but at least he had all the relative freedoms afforded to any British citisen instead of being regarded as little more than property in the eyes of the law. He sympathised with omegas, but the problem was larger than him, and therefore it hadn’t really been his problem at all.

Now it’s his problem. His reality. And no one’s coming to save him either.

 

_____

 

He’s been to Harry’s home several times since V-Day, at first to mourn the man, then to scramble about packing up some of his clothes and personal effects during Harry’s prolonged stay in medical, and then later as colleagues and friends looking to unwind after a mission or to simply catch up.

This is the first time he’s come here when it hasn’t been of his own free will.

And it’s funny, everything still looks the same, there’s still all the dead bugs on the walls and the incomprehensible art. There’s the nice little homey touches and Harry’s scent, everywhere. These things never failed to calm Eggsy before, but now Eggsy can’t help but see them in a whole new light. They are the trappings of his new prison, because he isn’t allowed to leave the house now without his alpha or an acceptable (read: family member or trusted beta) minder. Isn’t allowed to have anyone over unless they’ve been put on a pre-approved visitor’s list signed off by Harry.

“The rest of your things, and JB, will be delivered tomorrow,” Harry tells him as he helps Eggsy get settled down on the sofa and goes to put away the clothes they’ve brought from his flat into the bedroom. Their bedroom. They’re bonded now and they share a bedroom. Or rather, Harry allows for Eggsy’s clothes to exist in his wardrobe and for Eggsy to sleep beside him in his bed. Harry didn’t have to let Eggsy keep any of this things, because they are no longer legally Eggsy’s and it would have been his right to have sold them off or thrown them away, but of course Harry wouldn’t do that. Of course.

Eggsy feels like shit. He’s still sore, and weirdly tender in places he doesn’t want to think too deeply about. His skin feels too tight for his frame, like it’s gone and shrunk ten sizes.

Everything feels wrong, not the least of which are his moods. Changing hormonal balance, it was explained to him. It would take a bit to settle down. He feels like he’s just a hair trigger from bursting into tears or flying into a rage.

He doesn’t do anything, sitting on that sofa while Harry goes about making room for him in his life. Just lets his gaze become dull and unfocused as he tunes the rest of the world out. It’s become easier and easier to do lately, letting that blanket of emptiness wash over him so that he feels nothing, thinks nothing. If he had to be stuck inside his head for too long, he’s sure he’d go mad.

Eggsy’s startled out of it by a touch to his shoulder, and flinches so badly that Harry steps back as if he’s been burned. And Harry’s face, it’s so pained and furious at once, the hand by his side balling up into a fist and then releasing.

“Are you hungry?” Harry asks as if Eggsy hadn’t been having a major freak out right there and then. “I could order us some takeaway.”

“No thanks,” Eggsy says when he’s sure he can open his mouth and speak civilly. “I’m tired. I just wanna go to bed.”

Maybe he’s already being a bad omega, not waiting for Harry’s response or consent or what the fuck ever. Eggsy doesn’t care. He stands and climbs the stairs and almost goes to the guest bedroom before realising that’s not where he’ll be sleeping tonight.

The bed is large and comfortable looking, and Eggsy climbs into the side that doesn’t have all the books on the nightstand and smells just a little bit less like Harry. He’s always dreamed of climbing into this bed, of getting to sleep there beside Harry after a vigourous bout of life-affirming shagging, waking up next to him each morning with sleep soft smiles, bathed in early sunlight.

Not like this.

He curls up into himself, right on the edge of the mattress, barely taking up a sliver of the bed itself. Doesn’t know how long it’s been, lying in the dark, trying to sleep and failing to do little more than tune the world out. At some point, he drifts off for a bit, but rouses when he feels the mattress dip beside him, smells Harry’s clean, freshly showered scent, feels his presence in a way he can’t describe, with some newfound sense he has never possessed before.

The bond, he realises. This is what it’s like. He's never known, could never really understand them alpha/omega bonds, had been sort of sceptical about the whole notion when it was described to him, really. Except, now he _knows_. He _understands_. It’s like an animal curling up at the back of his mind, an extra sense that is both of him and not. His bond bite, which is still so sore and tender, tingles with awareness, as if remembering the flash of teeth, where Harry took in his blood and gave him his virulent saliva in return, cemented a connection between them, changed them from the inside out.

He tenses at the hand Harry gingerly places between his shoulder blades, then gradually relaxes, letting the heat of it sink into his skin. The touch feels extraordinarily good, better than Eggsy thought any touch could ever feel again, like Harry’s gone and closed a fraying circuit. It makes something inside of himself keen for more, even as the rest of him wants to pull back and shake Harry’s hand off, can barely stand physical contact of any sort. Caught in indecision, he just remains where he is, curled away from Harry, frozen with warring desires that both feel wrong and right.

“I’m so sorry, Eggsy,” he hears Harry whisper. “So very sorry, my love.”

 

_____

 

Eggsy goes to bed, and then he never really leaves it.

He finds the effort, save for the absolute necessity of having to get up to use the loo, to be too exhausting, so why bother? He’s got nowhere to be and nothing important to do now. He isn’t even considered a person anymore.

Legally, he’s little more than a thing.

He’s tired all of the time, so it’s just easier to remain still, even in his own growing stink, even if his body begins to ache from lying prone for so long. Those drowsy moments of wakefulness become annoying intermissions between the precious stretches of unconsciousness.

He doesn’t even dream, like his brain is too tired to even plague him with nightmares.

And Harry just lets him. Doesn’t order Eggsy to get up and take care of himself. Doesn’t yell at him for being a useless layabout.

Harry makes sure he drinks glasses of water and juice and lukewarm tea, even if he has to hold Eggsy’s limp head up himself.

Harry tries to coax Eggsy into eating things with uneven success, even resorts to bribing Eggsy with ice cream for supper or pieces of chocolate, anything with calories that will at least melt in Eggsy’s mostly unresponsive mouth.

When Eggsy starts getting truly rank, he runs a wet flannel over Eggsy’s skin, though Eggsy shoves his hand away like it’s made of hot metal when Harry draws too close to _those_ areas.

He doesn’t leave Eggsy unless he really has to, and even then, he doesn’t leave Eggsy for long. He takes meetings from home and only accepts local missions that have him back in the house before the end of the day. He writes his reports while sitting next to Eggsy’s still lump in bed, lets JB sleep with them, his stout little body snorting and snuffling loudly against Eggsy’s back.

He gets into the habit of talking out loud to Eggsy, asking questions and then following them up as if Eggsy’s answered him.

“Your mother called,” Harry says to him. “Wants to know how you’re doing. I said it’s been difficult, but you’re adjusting. No, I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but you are. Every day you’re here is a win.”

“Hmm, you’re right. I suppose JB could use a livelier companion than Mr Pickle. He does seem to be terribly lonely these days. Another dog perhaps? How do you feel about Jack Russells? Excitable things that would surely give JB a run for his money. Me too, though, I’m afraid.”

“It’s been a shit day, Eggsy. My favourite curry place has gone out of business. The people of London have no taste, do they?”

“A new exhibit at the Tate is opening soon. If you’re feeling up to it, I could get us tickets. I think you’ll enjoy this one. Just let me know what works for you.”

He’s so patient, gives Eggsy his space, just lets him exist in his misery, until the day Eggsy wakes up and doesn’t feel quite so tired anymore, even though he still doesn’t feel particularly enthused about life either.

But, there’s less fog in his head, and it gives him enough motivation to actually have a nice long soak in the tub and wash away weeks of grime and despair. When he’s done, he finds the bedroom’s already been aired out, the linens changed, and the bed made, military corners and all. It would be such a wasted effort on Harry’s part if Eggsy were to simply climb back into it and undo all his hard work, so Eggsy heads downstairs instead.

Harry’s cooked him a meal, chicken noodle soup and sandwiches that are fancier than anything Eggsy would have thought to make. They’re buttery and grilled and have got pesto in them, but it all just tastes like ashes in his mouth. It doesn’t exactly stoke his non-existent hunger, but he tries to eat anyway because Harry’s just looking so relieved to see Eggsy even making the attempt.

 

_____

 

He starts to feel a little better. Or maybe just less bad. Sleeps less, remains alert for longer stretches. He can’t walk JB, but he can let him run around out in the garden, chasing the ball Eggsy throws for him over and over and over again until his arm is sore. Harry’s installed one of them omega privacy fences so Eggsy can go outside without wearing the full covering omegas have to wear now that hide them from view and the possibility of tempting other alphas. The coverings are hard to see out of and make it hard to walk without the aid of one’s alpha or minder, which is probably the point. The whole thing enrages him, but it also makes him pathetically grateful, like an inmate relishing the few hours he gets to have out of his cell. Eggsy spends most of his days outside soaking up the sun, and even stays out there on days when it’s cloudy and overcast.

Then he gets sick. Really sick.

Nausea all the time. Exhaustion that is somehow different from what he had before. Aching all over. Bloated. Gassy. God awful reflux until he can’t lie flat on his back anymore. What little he manages to eat comes right back up and then he can’t stop vomiting all the time, even when there’s nothing left for his body give up. Harry worries about dehydration. Even has Eggsy hooked up to an IV line every morning until his arms start to look like an addict’s.

He feels like he’s dying. Maybe he is. Maybe this forced change is also going to kill him, mutate his DNA so bad that soon he’ll just shrivel up and die. Eggsy doesn’t know if that would be a welcome event or not.

His scent’s gone and changed, Harry informs him one morning, and once he points it out, Eggsy realises it’s true. The ever present scent of funeral flowers that lingers in his nose has a hint of something else, something sharper. He hadn’t really noticed before because, well, he hadn’t been paying attention to much of anything lately, but also because the new note is familiar in its own way and it never occurred to him to be alarmed by it. It’s Harry. It’s Harry and him.

“Oh fuck,” he whispers, hand subconsciously covering his stomach in dawning horror.

Harry goes out, because Eggsy can’t, at least not without proving to be more of a hindrance, and the thought of going out now in this newfound alien state is terrifying. Harry goes out and comes home with multiple pregnancy tests, and Eggsy dutifully pisses on each one even though his hands won’t stop shaking, and minutes later all of them confirm the same bloody thing.

“Shit,” is what Harry says, but it’s not with as much dread as Eggsy would have thought.

He finally gets to leave the house, but it’s only to the taxi out front, and he even has to cover up for those twelve steps of possible public exposure, unable to see out the sides of the limited screened cut-out in the hood, only able to barely see what’s directly ahead. The taxi has to drive all the way up to the estate in Hertfordshire, because Eggsy is no longer a part of Kingsman and is therefore not allowed to use the lift in the shop, even if Harry’s pulled some strings to have all his medical needs seen to by Kingsman’s staff, and that’s probably only because they want to keep an eye on him for any more freak changes.

It’s okay though. He gets to stare out the window and drink in the life that still goes on around him, flashes of city and lights and people on the pavement, crossing the street, stumbling out of pubs, shopping and talking and laughing. He hadn’t realised how people starved he was until he could only glimpse them through tinted, bulletproof glass.

Eggsy barely has a chance to savour the fresh air of the estate grounds before he’s urged down to medical for his exam. He doesn’t meet any other agents or tech workers from Merlin’s division on the way down, which is suspiciously odd, but for which he is also grateful. He’s not sure how he’d handle the interactions, if he could maintain some false veneer of cheerful normalcy, if he could handle the pity.

As it is, moving through the mansion with Harry at his flank, a hand on his shoulder to keep him in line, seeing all the places he used to simply hang about in without a care in the world beyond what tie he ought to wear tomorrow, hurts so much he doesn’t think he’d be able to talk anyway.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, luv,” he says to Morgana, Kingsman’s CMO, when he catches her eye from between his spread legs, even winks at her for good measure.

He must still have some of his old charm left, because she laughs, and for a moment, he feels like himself.

 

_____

 

Harry gets to remain a Kingsman agent, and Eggsy gets to remain an omega.

Harry goes on longer missions now, and Eggsy stays at home, pregnant.

Every morning, Eggsy stands in front of the mirror and forces himself to look his body. At first glance, nothing seems to have changed, but closer examination reveals all the subtle differences that add up to something fundamentally unrecognisable. The bond bite has healed over into a bright pink circular scar high up on his neck, unmistakeable, forever marking him as one who’s been claimed. His face and body have lost their sharp angles, grown rounder and fuller. His hips are wider, thighs more ample. The prenatals have done wonders for his hair and nails. His chest is…not so flat. His nipples, which never used to be sensitive, are constantly tender now.

He refuses to contemplate all the changes below his hips, has maintained a perfect wilful ignorance of his backside. Has barely acknowledged that part of himself at all aside from basic sanitation. If he thinks about it too hard, he can feel the way he is looser, more open, more slick down there when he should not be.

His lower stomach is rounded, just slightly, barely noticeable. Eggsy looks and tries to pretend nothing is there, that there isn’t a parasite growing inside him who shouldn’t be there. He can’t fathom creating and incubating life. Doesn’t want to. The very thought causes something inside himself to recoil.

He loathes the idea of being pregnant. So he pretends he isn’t.

Eggsy finds himself alone in the house with nothing but the telly and JB for company on most days. Michelle can only come by to visit so often because Daisy’s in a better school now and they’ve got to adhere to stricter timetables.

“Got something to do with Daisy needing more stability, luv,” his mum says between drags off her cigarette. She’s put a fan on to blow the smoke towards the open window out of courtesy for his _lil one_ though. “She don’t eat by seven every morning, she’ll grow up to be a serial killer or something, I guess.”

Tom, the alpha Michelle was bonded to after Dean was _encouraged_ to dissolve his claim on her, is not that bad for an alpha, though he insists on being called _Tommy_ like a good ol' lad and is just as traditionalist as they come. He’s worlds above Dean at least, even if that’s not saying much.

Eggsy sees Roxy even less, busy as she is now that Kingsman’s down a knight ( _Whose fault is that?_ he wants to bitterly ask).

He hasn’t been able to see Ryan and Jamal, both alphas, at all, but he calls them constantly, and if they don’t pick up, he leaves rambling voicemails, blows up their phones with texts, probably annoys the ever living fuck out of them, so desperate he is to hear a friendly voice.

At first, he’s too busy being so nauseated he can’t move lest he vomit all over himself, or worse still: cry, but then when the morning sickness (which is all day and all night sickness, for Eggsy) finally begins to let up, the dull, mind-numbing boredom sets in.

He was never much of a neat freak, but he takes to cleaning the house and then becomes obsessed with it, giving every metal and wooden object under the roof a good polish, every glass surface a gentle, streak-free wipe. He dusts and hoovers and mops, he spends a whole fucking afternoon trying to fix the fucking duvet in the guest room, because the cover is far, far larger than the comforter inside, and both claim to be queen size, so what the fuck?

But the house can only be so clean before he starts wearing grooves into the floor, so for lack of anything better to do, he starts watching YouTube videos and teaches himself how to cook increasingly elaborate meals because he hasn’t got anything but time these days. He can’t go shopping without going through the hassle of trying to plan a day out well in advance with someone who can accompany him, so he starts ordering from a grocery service that brings all the ingredients to him, leaving his purchases in a key coded insulated chest that he’s got to get himself all covered up for _just to open the fucking front door_ after the delivery person leaves in order to pull it back into the house.

So Harry gets to enjoy a well-kept home and eat nice meals that would please even his discerning palate. Whenever he can bother to be fucking home for them that is.

Eggsy gets wrapped up in truly awful domestic soap operas about omegas backstabbing each other to get at each other’s alphas (the bad omegas are always, always punished), buys too many things online with Harry’s credit card that he doesn’t need or particularly want, but for a single moment had captured his fancy. The house fills up with stupid things like dog toys, gag gifts, and practically every infomercial gadget that exists on the market until Harry’s home starts to look less like a dwelling of elegant, if eccentric, refinement and more like a cheap novelty shop. He buys clothes and then more clothes, things even he finds kind of hideous, and then nearly burns them all (and probably the entire house down with them) when he discovers his previous measurements are no longer the same because he’s gotten so much fatter.

He starts spending hours upon hours on the internet under Harry’s account (his own is now restricted to lifestyle websites and caring for babies and the like, because he’s now a dumb omega who can’t possibly handle adult content or serious subjects), endlessly trawling through omega blogs and forums. Not the public government ones that are full of bullshit advice on how to be content with one’s shitty lot in life and why an omega’s primary goal should be to serve their alpha. No, he finds the dark ones. The ones that are populated by other desperate and desperately sad omegas who’ve found ways, however small and seemingly pointless, to get around the restrictions placed upon them.

Their lives are wretched and so much worse than his. They share stories of the regular abuse they suffer at their alpha’s hand, how their alpha has other omegas on the side, even other children, how they won’t let them go on birth control or heat suppressants, how they loan them out to other alphas. One omega was beaten so badly by his alpha that he ran out of his flat into the street and flagged down a copper, only to get arrested and punished for daring to go out in public alone and uncovered.

Eggsy reads and reads and digests these stories like he’s starving and they are the only things that can sustain him. He doesn’t know why he becomes obsessed with living within another’s pain, letting the injustice and the cruelty rake over his soul and cement his hatred over alphas and what they’ve done, hour after hour, day after day.

Some omegas talk about their rich and vivid lives living in the Scandinavian Union, which was formed after V-Day, led by Alpha Princess Tilde of Sweden. It’s been nicknamed _The Last Omega Sanctuary_.

There, forum posters write, an omega is given all the same rights as any alpha or beta.

There, an omega is considered a person.

Moreover, the SU grants refugee status to any omega who makes it across their borders, will assist them in chemically dissolving their bonds to their alphas, will protect them from alphas trying to drag them or their children back, will set them up with a new life. It’s pissed off all their neighbouring countries and trading partners, sure, but the SU came out of V-Day more stable and in a better economic position than most, and certainly lost a lot less of their leaders.

Eggsy reads and reads and becomes monstrously envious of all those lucky omegas who made it across, resents the way they gush on and on about how happy and how grateful they are to be living in freedom.

Mostly, he’s just angry at himself for not keeping Tilde’s personal number.

 

_____

 

They haven’t had sex since that first horrific time that led them to their current circumstances. Between the change and the…the ensuing incident…and the depression and the pregnancy, Eggsy hasn’t had a sex drive at all, much less been able to get hard.

But pregnancy jars his out-of-whack hormones further off-kilter, and there are more and more moments when he finds himself inexplicably horny as fuck. He tries to siphon it off with furtive wanks in the shower, but there’s a growing need in him that isn’t being satisfied by merely tossing off.

At first, he can’t figure out why climaxing just leaves him frustrated and unsatisfied, just drives the burgeoning ache in him deeper and more insistent, and then he starts to feel even wetter down there, and understands.

Understands, and doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so he ends up doing both, until the tears just turn to full on sobbing, the ugly kind that leaves him puffy, snotty and red faced, but no one else is in the house to witness it, so it’s okay.

Later that night, Harry gets home very late and finds Eggsy still up, sitting on the edge of their bed, waiting for him. He’s surprised, Eggsy knows, from the way he pauses in the doorway, hand that had been raised to loosen his tie freezing in mid air.

Eggsy looks at Harry, his bondmate, his alpha, and jail keeper, then stands up and slowly starts to peel off his clothes.

“What are you doing?” Harry immediately asks, alarmed, making an abortive movement to step back. All of this would be terribly funny if it weren’t them and Eggsy didn’t have to be a slave to his fucking unwanted biology.

“I need you. I need to be…” He can’t say it though. Thinking of it terrifies him even as it arouses all those other parts of him, making him wetter. “Nothing else is working.”

Harry gets it, Eggsy can practically see the light bulb go on in his head. Eggsy thought maybe Harry would be eager to finally get a leg over after all this time, but instead he just looks sad and angry again.

“Eggsy…” he sighs, and it’s like the weight of the world has come down on him all at once. He looks old and tired. His scent smells stale.

So Eggsy just finishes stripping, feeling just a little bit self conscious because he’s definitely lost all the muscle definition, and crawls up onto the bed on all fours. He sinks down onto his elbows, keeps his arse up, then rests his forehead against his arms, burying his face into the covers and just breathing in. “Come on,” he mumbles. “Offering a free omega buffet here. Just give it to me.”

Not exactly words of poetry and romance, but this ain’t what it’s about. Eggsy has an itch that needs scratching and Harry’s the only one who can do it for him now. It’s a barely tolerable means to a grim conclusion.

It’s quiet for so long, Eggsy’s about to raise his head and check if Harry were even still in the room, but a touch to his flank makes him jump. Harry smooths away his startlement with his broad open palm running up and down his spine and it’s nice, more comforting than sexual. Eggsy finds himself relaxing beneath Harry’s hand despite it all.

“You should turn over,” Harry whispers.

Eggsy frowns. “Why?”

But Harry just nudges at his shoulder, wordlessly coaxing Eggsy to turn onto his back to look up at Harry standing over him. He feels vulnerable and exposed like this, naked beneath Harry’s gaze, and honestly, more than a little disgusting.

But the look on Harry’s face is one of softness, even reverence, and Eggsy doesn’t know how to respond to that. Doesn’t know what to do with Harry just smooths his big hands up Eggsy’s legs and over his hips, running them up his chest and over the sensitive hard buds of his nipples. Electricity seems to spark in the wake of the trails Harry blazes across his skin. The thing in his head, the thing he knows to be their bond, lights up like a Doppler.

Harry crawls up onto the bed between his legs, and his weight bears down over Eggsy. The feeling of it makes Eggsy suddenly recall the weight of those other alphas on top of him and he gasps, trying to shove Harry off.

“Eggsy?”

“Please, no. Not like…not like that. I…” he pants, and feels clumsy in trying to speak, all the fear clawing at his throat.

Harry seems to understand anyway, because he rolls onto his side next to Eggsy and Eggsy can breathe again. “Maybe you should be on top.”

And…yeah, yeah that sounds pretty good actually. Eggsy calms his rabbiting heart and nods his assent, so Harry just rolls fully onto his back and starts to unbuckle his belt, but stops when he sees Eggsy just frowning at him. “What is it?”

“You’re just gonna unwrap the part that’s on the business end and that’s it? Got places to be, bruv?”

That seems to throw Harry. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to…be more than that.”

And, alright. So he hasn’t exactly been giving any indication that he wants Harry for more than just an alpha dicking. Hasn’t exactly been a loving, graceful partner in any of this at all when all Harry has been is patient and understanding and generous. Harry didn’t want any of this any more than Eggsy, had just as little choice, slave to his own biology as he is, and now is literally willing to lie back and think of England just so Eggsy can fuck himself on his dick to get off.

“I want you to get your kit off,” he tells Harry.

Harry’s still so fit, still runs around and knocks out rooms of bad guys on a regular basis. He’s hard, lean muscle and scars and graceful strength. He’s got a beautiful body, and Eggsy’s sort of kicking himself for not ever having bothered to take it in before now when a few months ago, he’d have been salivating and chomping at the bit for this very thing. All that wasted time, but what a horrible price to have to pay.

Harry’s cock is still an intimidating thing, though. Long and thick and already hard and glistening. Had Eggsy still been a beta, he’d have outright nixed the idea of that thing going anywhere near his arse, but it’s supposed to happen now, isn’t it? He’s been remade to take it. Has already done so (multiple times with multiple others) already.

He’s about to rip off the plaster and just sit on it when Harry’s holds him back. “You’re not ready,” Harry says.

He wants to ask what the hell does that mean, but then Harry dips his fingers into his crack and presses them into his hole.

Eggsy gasps, instinctively pushing back against those fingers, then wants to writhe away, get them out. It feels too vulnerable, too intimate, too real. Harry just grips his hip though, and his fingers work in and out of his hole, twisting and widening, encouraging his body to produce more lubrication.

Harry presses in deeper at his next pass, presses up deep inside him in a spot that makes him yelp and thrust back hard on his fingers. His whole body finally feels alive with the sensation. It’s the first thing that’s felt unadulteratedly good in a long while.

“There, there you are,” Harry whispers, and does it again and again and again.

Eggsy doesn’t know how many minutes pass like this, Harry fingering him open until he's creating embarrassingly filthy squelching noises, Eggsy moaning and rocking on his hand, his own cock growing stiff and dripping against his belly, but it’s good and yet not enough, now that his body’s woken up and understood that it can have more.

“Mmm, enough. I’m ready now,” Eggsy says, snatching at Harry’s wrists and drawing his fingers out of his body.

Harry must agree because he just lets Eggsy move him into position, half sitting up against the pillows of the bed, legs drawn up just slightly and bent at the knee to cradle Eggsy as he slowly begins to sink down on his cock.

And, oh, Harry had been onto something with Eggsy not being ready, because even with all the prep and coaxing his smouldering arousal to burn bright, Harry’s cock is not easy to take in, not when he hasn’t had it in so long, and Harry is so huge, sliding up into him, feeling like the size of a lorry.

The grip he’s got on Harry’s shoulder tightens until his knuckles turn white, probably gonna leave bruises on Harry’s skin. The stretch burns, he feels literally gutted, and has to stop after only a few inches.

“Breathe, just breathe,” Harry tells him, rubbing circles into his hips, not moving so much as a millimetre while Eggsy tries to adjust to being split in two.

It’s slow and somewhat painful going, but then eventually he’s got Harry’s cock fully up inside him and his arse is now nestled against the coarse hair at its base. He makes a few experimental rocking shifts of his hips, lifts up a little and then sinks back down, and it’s good.

It’s so, so good.

Harry’s cock is long and thick enough to reach up inside Eggsy and hit just the right spot. He raises himself up and down on Harry’s cock, speeding up, going deeper, until he’s practically lifting himself until only the head of Harry’s cock is still inside and then forcefully dropping back down, relishing every inch getting shoved back into him along the way.

Harry just braces him, remains still and tense beneath Eggsy, panting. His forehead and temples have broken out into a sheen of sweat, darkening the crown of his hair. He meets Eggsy’s eyes, and Eggsy can’t look away and feels like he’s being consumed whole.

He doesn’t know if he can handle it. It’s more than just the cock up his arse. It’s the bond. That acute awareness of Harry in every way. He feels it worse than ever, illuminating him from inside, blurring all the hard edges of reality until he can’t be sure where he ends and Harry begins. It’s intimacy like he’s never known, doesn’t know how two people could possible be closer than this.

He can feel his climax building inside him, but also the awareness of something building outside him too, another’s pleasure that’s his and yet not, until the twin sensations become too much and he comes with a shout, untouched, spurting all over Harry’s chest, grinding down on his cock to get as much of it inside himself as he can. Beneath him, Harry has tensed up too, groaning loud and long, coming along with Eggsy, must be feeling all the same things he does, their shared, mutual ecstasy.

When he’s collected some of his breath back, Eggsy does something he hasn’t really ever done with Harry before: he leans down and kisses him, truly kisses him.

And Harry responds like a thirsty man who’s discovered drops of water on his lips, opening up and kissing Eggsy back hungrily, framing Eggsy’s face with his hands, drinking him in as if he’ll never have another chance.

But he will, Eggsy thinks. He will because Eggsy’s just discovered the one good thing in this entire nightmare and he’s not going to let it go now.

 

_____

 

They fuck a lot more after that, like the fucked up newly-bondeds they are, like once the seal’s been broken, there’s nothing left to hold back all those restrained feelings and pent up hormones they’ve been carrying around, carefully masking from each other. They have morning sex and evening sex, and sometimes Eggsy calls Harry back from work just for mid-afternoon sex too. Sex thrice on Sundays, even.

So maybe Eggsy becomes obsessed with it, just like he’s obsessed with cooking and cleaning and reading about other omegas and buying too much frivolous shit (which have, of late, veered towards toys of a sexual nature because there’s a whole industry there that caters to omegas that he never knew about). This one isn’t so bad, is it? This one brings him closer to Harry, to his alpha, than ever before. This one lets him curl up to Harry at night instead of perching himself on the very opposite edge of the bed, lets him be free with his kisses and touches and affection. Lets him tolerate Harry’s adoring hand on his protruding stomach. This one makes him feel halfway human. It’s not like he can get more knocked up.

It’s a lot of work, actually, for just a few moments of euphoria. There’s lots of clean up after, because Harry can’t knot him when he’s not in heat, and all that vaunted prolific alpha come has nowhere to go but _out_ , creating a mess of the bed (or whatever surface they’ve chosen) and themselves. Eggsy has to do a lot more laundry. Alpha and omega lives are fucking complicated and more than a little gross.

But Harry has to go away for longer than he gets to stay, longer than he ever gets to be in Eggsy, or simply by Eggsy’s side, being a soothing, comforting presence. Harry has to go away because he can, is allowed and expected to. Harry is free.

These days, Eggsy gets up even before Harry because his heartburn doesn’t let him get much sleep and he drinks three cups of black tea because he sure as fuck is not giving up caffeine and makes Harry breakfast before going back upstairs to kiss Harry awake and sometimes, or often, that ends up turning into a lot more, and after they clean up and Eggsy eats with him and cleans up after him and then sees him to the front door that he has to hide behind when it opens and Harry gets to leave.

Then Harry goes off to save the world and wear nice suits and be seen and talks to people of all types and can go to the shop if he wants or to the pub for a drink or to the park if he feels like taking a stroll. People look him in the eye and talk to him and take his opinions seriously and respect him.

And Eggsy starts fucking cleaning everything in his prison, top to bottom, even though none of it has been dirty for weeks, but JB sheds and seeing swirls of dust in columns of sunlight leaking in through the windows drives him mad, because it’s going to land on some surface eventually and then it will be dirty and it’s like fucking Sisyphus here, nothing will ever get clean.

All his cleaning products are organic and safe and smell like fucking lemons. He can’t eat soft cheeses. He can’t eat sushi. He can’t go outside to take his dog for a walk and he can’t talk to anyone and he can’t be a Kingsman agent and he can’t be fucking human.

He’s so fucking miserable.

He can’t drink, but Harry hasn’t thought to lock up the liquor, and so Eggsy pours himself a tall glass of scotch, holds it up, and just thinks about gulping it down, fetus be damned, that cancerous clump of cells. He’ll drink the whole fucking stash maybe. Mix them with a few of the painkillers Harry has in the medicine cabinet, not enough to kill him, but enough to put him out of his mind for a bit and make these long fucking days go by just a little faster.

He puts the glass to his lips, smells the sting of alcohol and can almost taste it, wants to, but in the end he just chucks the fucking glass at one of Harry’s dead butterfly cases, breaking both it and the glass, dousing the carefully preserved butterflies in booze, causing their fragile wings to immediately disintegrate and smear down the side of the wall in beautiful pigments of blue and purple and green and orange and red.

He doesn’t clean it up.

He stops cleaning entirely. The bed goes unmade, the clothes remain dirty on the floor.

Tumbleweeds of JB’s fur begin to collect at all corners of the floor and start carpeting the furniture.

He doesn’t cook anything either, just eats leftovers and leaves the plates in the sink or on the table or out on the counter, and when he runs out of those, he just starts picking off the pantry stores, eating what can be grabbed out of hand, and when there’s nothing left there, he finally orders takeaway.

He doesn’t bother covering up or yelling through the door at the delivery person to leave the goods on the doorstep, just opens the door when the bell rings and watches as the young alpha in front of him breathes in his pregnant omega scent, sees his uncovered face and the way his belly’s just beginning to pop out of his shapeless, oversized clothes, and pales dramatically.

“You…you shouldn’t be revealing yourself!” the alpha spits out, already backing away from Eggsy like he’s got fucking rabies.

“Yeah?” Eggsy challenges. “What the fuck are you going to do about it? Am I tempting you right now? Wanna come in and fuck me? Go ahead. Go on and try something. I fucking dare you!”

He’s disappointed when the alpha just drops his curry on the ground, turns tail, and runs.

“You’re a fucking coward!” Eggsy yells after him. “All alphas are! You tossers!”

He eats his curry with his fingers because he hasn’t got any clean forks left, then just leaves the empty, greasy carton out on the coffee table before kipping on the sofa with some mindless telly, JB curled up over his rounded belly, trying to lick at his curry-stained fingers.

Harry comes home after his three-week long mission to a household in utter disarray. He stands in the foyer, a bit stunned at the sheer mess that has managed to accumulate since the last time he’s stepped foot in his house.

“You want a clean house?” Eggsy greets him as he passes Harry on his way up the stairs. “Get a fucking housekeeper.”

 

_____

 

They get a housekeeper, a beta female, who comes twice a week, though after failing to engage Eggsy in conversation, she gives up and just silently moves through the house like another ghost.

He’s not trying to be rude. He isn’t. He doesn’t like himself like this: surly, mean-spirited, hateful. There’s just so much frustration and anger that has nowhere to go. Before, he’d have gone out and done something recklessly stupid like vandalise a wall or steal a car. At Kingsman, he could always reliably if extralegally expend his excess energy in sparring or on missions with a few well placed headshots. Now that he’s been locked away from the world, he’s got nothing but to tear into the people who get to walk in and out of his cage at their leisure.

Because hell stops becoming his immediate surroundings and starts becoming his own body, and there’s no scouring or ignoring or getting away from it. His belly’s been expanding at a rapid pace now that the first trimester’s passed. It leaves him feeling like a beached whale with an aching back, swollen feet, periodic numbness throughout his extremities, and that damnable acid reflux. He’s essentially exisitng in a permanent state of discomfort.

He feels _it_ now, inside him, moving, alive. Little flutters that he’d confused for indigestion at first. He thought it was supposed to be the moment when he would feel love and connection and all the bloody hormonally induced good things omegas were supposed to feel towards their babies, but all Eggsy feels is inconvenienced irritation at best and downright repulsion at worst.

The fetus doesn’t feel like it’s a part of him so much as an alien taken up residence inside his body, feeding off his lifeforce, growing and gaining strength and shitting inside him in preparation for the day it’ll burst out of his body in some fantastically horrific _Alien_ -esque scene. Obviously, it won’t be like that, but that’s what Eggsy thinks about because he doesn’t want to imagine the reality, doesn’t want to think about how it’s got to come out, because that’s somehow far, far worse.

But the worst of it, the very worst, is how much Harry _loves_ it. How now whenever Harry looks at him, his gaze automatically shifts to Eggsy’s belly and lingers there. How frequently his hand will come to rest over the swollen protrusion as they casually sit beside each other on the sofa for a night in (it’s always a night in) or how Harry will slide up to him from behind in bed and curl his hand over it, falling asleep like that, which is awfully fucking nice for him since Eggsy can’t sleep a wink anymore.

How so very _alpha_ Harry becomes, seemingly expressing more concern for the bloody fetus than for Eggsy himself.

“How’s our baby?” he tends to ask instead of asking after Eggsy. As if Eggsy would fucking know. He hasn’t got a clue as to anything about it because there isn’t actually a special metaphysical connection that forms between a fetus and its incubator like the omega soaps would have one believe. It’s not like the bond he shares with Harry, which flares to life through hormones and pheromones, physical touch and through the air in proximity to one another. As far as Eggsy can tell, the thing just spins around and kicks Eggsy’s bladder at all hours for shits and giggles, so he’s guessing it’s doing just fine.

And he hates how Harry keeps saying _our_. Like Harry’s got anything to do with this part of it, like he suffers the occasional return hauntings of nausea or the inexplicable aches, the ghastly stretch marks and the weird food cravings for kippers that he’s not even allowed to eat or milk actually leaking from his fucking nipples. Harry doesn’t have to watch his body transform against his will as it pursues its end goal of turning itself into a mobile life support machine.

He’s getting more resentful and sour by the day, and if Harry notices, he seems to condescendingly think it comes from _hormones_. Silly omegas.

One morning, nearly as soon as Harry leaves for the shop, Eggsy sees Harry’s mobile on the floor near the front door. It must have fallen out of Harry’s pocket without him noticing, since he had been in a rush and was already going to be late (as if that were a new thing, Eggsy doesn’t even know why Harry still tries).

He doesn’t know what comes over him. The thought of Harry being out of reach for him just...sends him into a panic. He hasn’t got Kingsman glasses. He hasn’t got any way of getting a hold of Harry if he needs him. It’s so stupid, because Harry goes on missions and is out of reach all the time, but for today, this morning, it’s simply unacceptable.

Eggsy doesn’t even think about it, he just pulls on his trainers (he’s got to use a stupid claw thing since he can’t really bend over anymore to reach his own feet), grabs his coat and keys and sets out, uncovered and unminded.

He doesn’t hail a taxi, because the walk is short and the weather is simply glorious, sunny and warm with the hint of spring just starting to emerge. All the city sounds become a symphony in his ears and he feels like he’s in some uplifting cinematic sequence: the main character walks along the pavement with a spring to his step, savouring life as if he has never seen it before.

He’s missed this. He’s missed this so fucking much he could cry.

And then it all falls apart.

Someone grabs his wrist hard, pulling him from his daze, and Eggsy turns to find a copper has got him. “Omega! You’re not supposed to be out here alone!” The cop’s gaze falls to his belly, and, if anything, it only seems to make him angrier. “And putting your own baby at risk, you irresponsible little cunt!”

“Well, fuck you too, mate,” Eggsy spits, because there will always be a part of him that hates the fuzz. “I’m just going for a walk! I’ve got the right to be here. I ain’t hurting nobody!”

Hearing Eggsy’s accent makes the corners of the cop’s mouth turn down in disgust. “Figures you haven’t got a proper alpha to teach you some manners, one who lets you just run around like a little slut, is it? What are you doing here in this neighbourhood? Trying to secure yourself a wealthy one? Well, I’m sorry, but people of good breeding don’t accept knocked up whores for bondmates.”

And that’s just enough to make Eggsy snap. He pulls the constable’s baton from its holster and smacks it precisely across his face before jamming it into his stomach and then whipping it across the back of his head to send him to the ground, unconscious, in mere seconds. The whole thing is fuelled by his anger and adrenaline, but it still leaves him a bit winded.

Put lightly, he’s caused a bit of a scene. The people around him are staring, some on their mobiles snapping pics or, more likely, phoning the police. He’s got to get out of there.

Eggsy drops the club and begins walking swiftly away, tries to blend in, except there’s no doing that. He’s a panicking pregnant omega and giving off alarming scents left and right, drawing unwanted attention from everyone he passes. The only thing he can do is hurry along, Savile Row isn’t too far now, he’s got to get to Harry before the cops can get to him.

He’s just turning the street corner when he hears the authoritative shout, the blare of the police alarm, and flashing lights. Eggsy breaks out into a run even if he feels like he’s going to trip and fall over at any moment, unable to nimbly dodge around other pedestrians and instead having to barrel right through.

The shop comes into view at last, and Eggsy can hear the car engine at his heels. He’s got a hand on the railing of the steps leading up to the entrance when he’s suddenly grabbed from behind into a chokehold and wrestled back.

“No!” he screams, uncaring of who hears him now. Eggsy fights back, arms shooting out wildly at his attackers, legs kicking out, but there are four of them and he’s so weak now, can’t even break out of the firm grip they’ve got as they try to subdue him. He’s been in this situation before, his hindbrain _knows_ what’s coming next, knows what they’ll do to him, so he just starts biting at anything within reach, causing one to curse at him and backhand him sharply across the face.

The blow stuns him long enough for them to get his hands behind him and cuffs around his wrists. They’re trying to gamely shove him into the back of the police vehicle when Eggsy hears a welcome voice.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Harry asks as he approaches them, all deadly, fluid stride, umbrella clicking on the pavement with each step.

“Sir,” one of the coppers begins, “We apologise for the disturbance. It seems a rebellious omega’s been let loose and you can see for yourself why we’ve got to keep them indoors. We’ll be leaving you in peace shortly.”

“I’d rather that didn’t happen, Police Constable…?”

“Winters, sir.”

“Police Constable Winters,” Harry says, “As I do believe that rebellious omega your alpha men are manhandling is mine.”

“Yours?” PC Winters echoes, taking a discrete sniff to confirm before he pales and steps back and then remembers himself. “With respect, sir, your omega was found wandering Berkeley Square without a guardian or the appropriate coverage. He then assaulted a police officer when he was stopped and questioned. Care to explain why that was?”

“That’s something I’d like to know myself,” Harry says, finally looking over at Eggsy.

Harry’s not happy. No, he’s _furious_ , and it’s making something inside Eggsy quake a bit in fear. Not that anything in his face gives it away, but Eggsy can smell the dark, simmering charcoal scent emanating off him, sees the way his eyes go flat, and he suddenly wishes the coppers would pack him off and send him down to the station after all.

“As it is, I will handle his punishment and would appreciate it if you would release him into my custody immediately,” Harry says, turning his attention back to the constable, all pure alpha command and poshness out in full force, because even if Eggsy’s gone and assaulted a policeman, it’s still Harry’s right to do with him as he sees fit. “He’s expecting, and I’d rather no one else be touching him right now.”

It’s all so very pleasantly said, but the cops around him all drop their hands away from him in such swift, bumbling unison, Eggsy would have laughed if he weren’t so fucking terrified. He’s still got to be uncuffed though, and one poor sod’s got to suffer Harry’s burning glare while he approaches Eggsy and removes them as fast as fucking possible.

They make their clumsy apologies and leave Eggsy to the fate of his alpha.

This is a man who is legally allowed to beat him now, Eggsy thinks. Probably kill him and not suffer too badly for it, and obviously not at all with Kingsman’s influence. Eggsy would just disappear and no one would really mourn him except his mum. Rox too, at least.

“Harry, I’m so...” he tries, but Harry just grabs hold of his wrist in a crushing grip and starts dragging him into the shop.

Eggsy’s big and clumsy and stumbles along, but Harry doesn’t relent or slow down for him, just yanks Eggsy across the shop floor, heedless of all the curious customers who gawk at them, and Dagonet, the ever steadfast guardian at the back of the shop, only looks on with careful neutrality.

“Harry,” he tries again.

But Harry just hisses, “ _Not_ here.”

He drags Eggsy into the empty dining room, practically tossing him in before shutting the door behind them and making sure it’s locked. The suddenness of being somewhere that’s both familiar and strange puts Eggsy on edge as he slowly backs away from Harry, trying to put the table and chairs between them.

Harry finally rounds on him, and Eggsy wishes he could bolt past him and run out of the shop.

“I have tried, Eggsy,” Harry says quietly, “to be patient with you. To give you your space. To be understanding of how difficult all of this has been.”

“I know,” Eggsy says, “I know, you’ve been so good to me, Harry. I know I don’t deserve it, but—”

“I’ve given you more free reign than most alphas would give their mates,” Harry continues. “Perhaps too much, in retrospect, if incidents like today are any indication.”

“I know,” Eggsy rushes to explain, feeling hot tears crowd his eyes, hating how he cries all the bloody time now, “I know. It won’t happen again. I just...I don’t know what came over me. You left your phone at home. I just wanted to—”

“But to risk the health and safety of our child,” Harry says, causing the rest of Eggsy’s words—and tears—to dry up, “is absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated from today henceforth.”

Eggsy forgets why he was afraid. Forgets about trying to apologise and appease.

He’s angry. No, he’s _enraged_.

“Excuse me? Risk…? I haven’t done fuck all to risk the wellbeing of this baby you’re so obsessed with! I went out for a fucking walk because I’m tired of sitting around that house all day with nothing to do but get fat so I can nurture your fucking spawn with my tits. I’m tired of having to cover up and hide away like I’ve got something to be ashamed of. I’m tired of being treated like your property!”

That last bit’s shouted out so loud, his voice echoes through the room, surely heard by everyone on the floor. But Eggsy doesn’t care anymore, because he’s so fucking sick and tired of this world.

“You look at me and all you see is this thing inside me now. Like it’s all you care about. Like there isn’t a me anymore, there’s just this...this!” he waves his hand at his belly, doesn’t even want to touch it. “Well I’ll tell you something, I fucking hate this baby, and I fucking hate being pregnant, and I fucking hate being your omega!”

Almost as soon as he’s said the words, Eggsy’s knows he’s made a mistake. Wishes he could just rewind the last two seconds of his life, has never wished for anything more.

Everything’s left Harry’s face. There’s nothing, a blankness, not a shred of emotion. His scent, too, is curiously flat. Eggsy didn’t know scents could even do that.

When Harry finally speaks, it’s like he’s talking to a stranger: cool, aloof, distant, but always, always polite. “I’ll have Dagonet bring something up for you to wear, and then I’ll take you home. You’re tired and stressed.” He doesn’t need to add, _it can’t be good for the baby_. “And I still have more work to do. I’ve been asked to take on what looks to be at least a month-long mission. I was hesitant to accept it because we were coming up on the third trimester, but maybe it would do us some good to have that time apart.”

“Harry,” Eggsy brokenly whispers. “Harry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, Eggsy, you did. And the worst part of it is that I always knew how you felt,” Harry says as his blank mask falls away, but what it reveals is so much worse: that sadness, the hurt, the disappointment, all caused by Eggsy himself because Eggsy’s doesn’t know how to stop lashing out and hurting the ones he loves. “I just didn’t want to accept it. Or perhaps I naively thought I could eventually change your mind and help you to see the positives of what we had. Things started badly, true, but I thought, if we both worked at it, believed in it, we didn’t have to let that define us.”

Harry smiles sadly at him. His brown eyes shine with tenderness. “But I can see the truth now. I was wrong.”

 

_____

 

Harry goes on his months-plus long mission, and Eggsy is still pregnant and more alone than ever.

His heart hurts. His body hurts. Every fucking thing in his life hurts.

It’s been seven months since this whole nightmare unfolded, and his life is still shit. Worse, he’s a piece of shit who deserves it.

He wants to fall into the early haze of numbness he had at the beginning, while away his days sleeping and feeling nothing again, and maybe with no one around to care for him like Harry had, he’d actually just wither away and die, but of course he can’t get his mind and body to cooperate with his wishes. The fetus makes demands of it daily, whether it’s to eat or to piss or to try and snatch a few winks sitting up because it sure as hell don’t want Eggsy sleeping when it’s actually night time.

For all his ranting and raving, Eggsy was right: His body really isn’t his own anymore.

 

_____

 

He opens his front door and gives Roxy the evils as she steps through.

“Oh stop looking at me like that,” she says while rolling her eyes before reaching out to pull him into a hug. Or trying to. There’s a sizable belly that gets in the way of everything. “Christ, you’re huge.”

“Thanks, Rox, good to see you too. I’d almost forgotten what you look like,” he says as he closes the door behind them, making sure no pearl-clutching neighbour dares get a glimpse of his pale, miserable mug.

“Still pretty, I hope,” Roxy cheekily replies before turning sincere. “I’m sorry, Eggs. Things have been...well, difficult. And I’ve been having to help Merlin train the—”

She cuts herself off, but Eggsy already knows. “Gawain recruits.”

“Yes,” she reluctantly confirms.

“It’s alright,” he shrugs, concentrating on the careful squat and gentle roll onto the sofa he’s got to do whenever he sits down now. “Better be a beta who gets it, though”

“Obviously. My candidate is kicking everyone else’s arses.”

“Good. Someone’s got to live up to the title.”

“No one has or will ever do that better than you,” Roxy says vehemently, and it’s nice to know Roxy’s got his back, even if Eggsy doesn’t deserve her fierce loyalty. “But that’s not actually...that’s not the real reason I’m here.”

“What, you mean you didn’t come over just to gaze upon the lustrous wonder of my fat arse and spotty face?”

“I admit, I thought pregnancy was supposed to make you glow, not give you a face like a cat’s arse. A cat’s spotty arse,” Roxy replies solemnly before they both break out into laughter, and god, he’s missed her so much.

“Well if you had a thirty pound bowling ball inside you and fluids leaking from every orifice you can think of, and some you can’t, at any given time, you’d be a bit put off too.”

“Oh god, thank you for reminding me to stick with my IUD,” Roxy says before sobering once more. “I suppose I don’t really know how to start, actually.”

“The beginning’s usually a traditional place.”

“Oh shut it, you berk.” But then, Roxy takes a deep breath and asks, “Remember the serum you were injected with that induced your change?”

“Only every bloody day of my life.”

“We kept the data and research that was recovered from the facility and had used the samples of what remained to study it further. As it would happen, what you were injected with was the only successful version of the serum to be produced.”

The implications hit him like lead. “You mean to tell me I coulda been injected with some faulty serum and...and ended up like them omegas in those cages? Or worse?”

“Yes. In that respect, you’re very lucky. We don’t know what else happened to the those who became alphas.” And for the first time, Eggsy sees Roxy appear less than composed. “We found their remains in the basement incinerator.”

“Jesus.”

“The thing is…” Roxy pauses, as if deciding how best to say it, because she is always so careful with her words, “I was monitoring the recruits one morning when I overheard one of them say something rather alarming. He’s the son of the owner of a major pharma company based in Ireland. He was speaking to another recruit about a secret project his father was commissioned to work on by the British government.”

Well, anything involving pharmaceuticals and government didn’t exactly sound like it was going have a happy ending, Eggsy would wager, not with the way Roxy started, and he had a good inkling of where this was heading, because the British government is full of alpha bastards as they come. “The serum.”

Roxy grimly nods. “I might have asked Merlin to hack into the father’s private servers.”

“Roxy!”

“And I might have learned that the government has all the data we had recovered from your mission. All of it, including the research into the final version of the serum you were injected with.”

Fuck. Eggsy can feel his mouth fall open and remain that way.

“There were plans, see,” Roxy continues, “to put a modified version of the serum into mass production and emails to someone within our own organisation.”

A traitor in their midst. Again. Of course.

“So I might have slept with Kay—”

Jesus fucking christ. “Rox!”

“Oh get over it, Eggsy, we’ve had to do a lot worse people in our line of work.” Which is a fair point. Eggsy has to give it to her, nodding for her to continue. Roxy takes a deep breath to calm down. “So I slept with Kay in order to gain access to his personal computer and let Merlin hack in. That was when we finally got to see the whole picture.”

Roxy’s got Eggsy on tenterhooks now, takes her sweet time in getting to the heart of it, and Eggsy’s just about to throttle her when she speaks, “Arthur is conspiring with the British government to unleash the serum on the country. It won’t happen all at once, of course, but gradually over generations, so while it wouldn’t raise any immediate alarms, there would be a very significant trend towards more alphas and omegas in Great Britain and far less betas than anywhere else in the world.”

Roxy swallows, her composure finally breaking as she gives Eggsy a look he’s never seen on her before: desperation. “They’re trying to wipe us out, Eggs.”

Eggsy clenches his jaw in anger. All the old fury and resentment he’s had time to cultivate towards Kingsman now feels perfectly fucking validated. “Fucking hell. Those fucking alpha pricks, fucking with nature like that. Typical.”

Roxy’s got better control than him though, only giving him a nod. “Indeed.”

“Do all the alphas in Kingsman know what’s happening?”

“I’m not sure. I suspect a few of the other agents might. Uncle Ali hadn’t known, but possibly it was because he was my sponsor.” And before Eggsy can jump to further conclusions, she rushes to add, “I’m sure Harry doesn’t know either, Eggs.”

The thought of Harry knowing what was going on and letting it happen, especially after seeing how much of it had personally affected Eggsy, is too gutting to think about. He shies away from the possibility, choosing to latch onto the bone Roxy’s thrown him. “So...so what are we gonna do?”

“Merlin and I are going to destroy all traces of the serum at the manufacturing sites and then make sure the formula and its means of replication are entirely erased from existence so one can ever use it or attempt to recreate it, at least for now,” she says so matter-of-factly, like she weren’t admitting to planning to commit treason against her organisation and government.

“Roxy...you’re gonna go against Kingsman on this. You. The girl who immediately stuck a gun in my face after I offed the last Arthur, first day on the job. The girl who never fails to file all her mission reports in a timely manner and is constantly held up by Merlin as the fucking gold standard.”

“I know.”

“They’re gonna know it was someone on the inside after it all goes down. It won’t be long til they point the finger at you and Merlin for obvious reasons.”

Roxy just nods calmly. “I’m prepared for that eventuality.”

Her calm attitude about this is exasperating. “Rox…”

“Look, Eggsy,” Roxy says, suddenly reaching out to lay her hands on his shoulders. She holds Eggsy’s gaze and he can’t look away from the sheer _determination_ that lies in her eyes. “This is bigger than you or I. This is fucking with nature, as you say. This is robbing a growing demographic of their dynamic. It’s condemning future generations of an entire nation into servitude. Maybe the entire world, if our government decides to sell the formula to others or it gets stolen. If there’s something I can do to stop it, then I have to try.”

She’s knowingly signing her own death warrant. Her and Merlin. God. Eggsy swallows, shaken by the revelation. “How can I help, Rox? Please tell me what I can do.”

But Roxy just smiles at him sadly. He’s getting so fucking tired of people doing that to him. “Nothing, Eggsy. I just wanted to tell you in case...in case things go pear shaped. Someone has to remember what happened. But I want you to promise me something too.”

“What?”

“Promise me you’ll do right by yourself, no matter what,” Roxy says to him, earnest now. “That you won’t let the bastards grind you down, alright?”

And what else can Eggsy do? He’s just a pregnant omega, big and useless right now, trapped by his status and condition. Different day, same old shit.

And so he just nods and clings to Roxy tightly, who clings just as tightly back, because it’s probably going to be the last time they’re ever going to hold each other after this. “I won’t, Rox,” he vows, voice thick and wavering but more fucking committed to this than anything in his life. “I swear it. I won’t.”

 

_____

 

Eggsy’s life is shit, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what others have got. He has a kind alpha. He’s healthy. He’s well cared for and lives in a nice house with plenty of food to eat.

Sure, he’s had the career he’s loved and his autonomy ripped away from him, been made into something he never wanted to be, a third-class citisen in his own society, forced to carry and give birth to a child he doesn’t want, and his alpha is now estranged from him on top of it all.

But at least he’s not about to walk into certain death like his best friend and his former handler (who is also still a friend, if he were being honest), sacrificing themselves to save the world once more.

He used to do that too, once upon a time.

He’s with his mum in the garden, and Daisy is having a grand time running around chasing JB, when his mum suddenly bursts into tears beside him.

“What…? Mum?” Eggsy asks, absolutely bewildered while trying to manoeuvre his body in closer to comfort her. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh Eggsy,” his mum wails, trying to wipe away the tears before they make her mascara run, but it’s already too late. “This is gonna sound so silly, but this morning I was brushing Daisy’s hair and just...I knew. I knew, Eggsy. She’s gonna grow up to be an omega like her mum and big brother. I can feel it.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, for Eggsy to feel sick again in a way that’s got nothing to do with his pregnancy. “Mum...there’s no way you can know that yet. And it’s not for a ways off anyway—”

“I know, babe. Knew with you too, that you leaned that way even if it were late in coming.” Because that was the explanation they had to give her after Eggsy’s unexpected change: sudden adult onset puberty. Rare, but it’s been known to happen before. “There’s lots of omegas in my family line. Always have been. So I...I just didn’t know where else I could go.”

“What?”

“Look,” his mum levels with him, looking him dead in the eye, “I know your alpha’s got connections. Big ones. You don’t go off and do military work you can’t talk about and then end up with a posh house like this without ‘em. So I just wanted to see if...if he could maybe pull some strings, like? See if he can get Daisy...out.”

Eggsy blinks. “Out? Out where?”

“Out of the country,” his mum says. She’s serious. She’d rather send Daisy away then let her grow up here. Would give her up to save her. “Maybe get her to the SU where she can grow up to be a free citisen. Never has to know what it’s like for us, Eggsy. And even if she don’t turn out to be an omega after all...why take the chance? She gonna lead a good life there either way. But she gotta get out of here first.”

His mum’s more perceptive than he’d given her credit for, Eggsy’s ashamed to discover. Harry certainly has big connections, and certainly has the means to get Daisy to safety. But what Eggsy isn’t sure of is whether Harry _would_.

Because while Harry is a very kind alpha, better than most of his ilk, he’s still an alpha. He hadn’t done anything to help Eggsy out of _his_ predicament, was all too happy to be complacent and maintain the status quo there, a happy alpha/omega unit with a baby on the way. What if he thought the same would be good enough for Daisy?

That she ought to grow up and fulfill the role she’d been given, that she would learn to be happy and content with the scraps life would throw her.

That she should never have the chance to know what it would be like to live in a world that considered all dynamics equal.

No.

Eggsy couldn’t chance it, not with his precious sister. Not with his own own fucking child either, for that matter.

He turns to his mother and lies through his teeth, but mostly, he tells her the truth.

“Yeah,” he says. “Harry can do it, mum. I’ll make sure it happens. Swear on me own life. Swear on the life of my child. We’ll get her out.”

 

_____

 

“...Lad,” Merlin says after a long moment of silence over the phone after Eggsy’s told him what he wants to do. “Are you sure about this?”

“No,” Eggsy honestly admits. “But I don’t got many choices, do I?”

 

_____

 

There had been a plan already in place, but with Eggsy now involved, and by extension, Daisy, they’ve had to tweak parts of it. It’s a risky plan all around, but then again, infiltrating an advanced intelligence agency like Kingsman was never gonna be a walk in the park, shouldn’t be, if the organisation was worth its salt.

Michelle drops Daisy off in the morning. “I told the minder I left something here I gotta pick up,” she says to Eggsy as he retrieves Daisy from her buggy and coaxes JB to take her place, covering him up with her blankets and pulling the overhead shade down low. It’s not going fool anyone for long, but it doesn’t have to if all goes well.

“Be a good boy for mum, JB,” he tells the pug, who sticks his furry little head out and pants at Eggsy, letting his tongue loll and closing his eyes in bliss when Eggsy gives him one last scritch behind his ears. Fuck, he’s going to that fucking dog so much. “Watch over her for me, alright?”

He tucks JB back in and orders him to be quiet, then looks up at his mum imploringly. “You can still come with us, you know.”

But Michelle becomes the third person to smile at him sadly, shaking her head. “Too late for the likes of me. Don’t really know how to live without an alpha, and I’m not sure I want to find out. I just want what’s best for my babe now. Both of em.”

Then she pulls Eggsy into a bone crushing hug and starts crying into his shoulder, but it’s okay because he’s tearing up into hers. “You take care of your sister, alright? And yourself. And your lil’ one when it comes. Maybe send me a picture some day. Christ, I’m too young to be a grandmum already, Eggsy. But I love you, baby.”

“I love you too, mum,” he barely manages to say, voice cracking on the last word.

When she leaves, he’s unable to keep himself from peering around the edges of the door, watching her walk down the mews towards her appointed guardian for the day and disappear around the corner.

“Just us against the world now, Daisy girl,” he whispers to the toddler in his arms.

 

_____

 

The call comes in. Something’s wrong with the fetus. There’s pain and blood. Eggsy makes sure to stage the scene just right, gets the blood to soak all down his backside and legs, and gets ready to put on the best blag of his life.

The Kingsman emergency team sweeps in, takes in the gruesome sight, the way he wails in agony curled up on the floor while trying to comfort a sobbing Daisy at the same time, and quickly puts him in the back of the ambulance, Daisy kept close at his side. They don’t even seem to care that he’s uncovered, not when a fetus’s life is at stake, Eggsy would guess.

The ambulance rushes through the morning London streets, sirens on full blast until they pull onto Savile Row and go eerily silent. Eggsy is moved quickly through the shop, which is still closed at that hour, and taken down to the shuttle via the dressing room lift. Figures the last time he’s going to ever set foot in Kingsman, it’d all come back full circle, but he ain’t gonna complain. He doesn’t think he’d be able to keep up the moaning act for the entire trip to the estate by road anyway.

When they get to headquarters, he’s rushed to medical, and Morgana is the first face of the staff he sees.

“Galahad’s just come back from his mission,” she unexpectedly tells him, “He’s been alerted to your condition.”

“Oh fuck,” he can’t help but say, because that isn’t in the plan. That so isn’t the plan. Harry’s supposed to be long gone. He’s supposed to not be there, to not care about Eggsy any longer. He’s supposed to be safely far away so Eggsy doesn’t have to look him in the eye and lie.

But it’s already too late. Harry’s practically run from the hangar to the medical ward, dishevelled, with blood still on the collar of his shirt. He looks exhausted with dark circles beneath his eyes and the lines of his face drawn deeper, but his gaze is fierce and desperate when he sets his sights on Eggsy.

“Eggsy,” he breathes, crossing the room to be at his side, takes in the way Eggsy’s feet are up in stirrups, how he’s hooked up to all kinds of monitors. “I was told...are you alright?”

He doesn’t ask about the baby, just keeps steadily gazing at Eggsy and Eggsy can barely take it, feels his face start to crumble beneath that naked concern. “Harry,” he chokes out. “I missed you so much. And I didn’t mean it. It’s going to be okay, yeah? I’m fine. Baby’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

And then Harry does something sort of magical, he smiles so beautifully at Eggsy, one that’s filled with relief and love in equal measure. It steals Eggsy’s breath away and then it hurts. It _hurts_. “I’m sorry for the way I left things. I seem to have a terrible habit of walking away from unresolved matters, don’t I? You’d think I’d have learned by now, but I’m an old fool, you see. The whole time away, I couldn’t help but regret my last words to you, wishing I could at least call you. But I’m here now, Eggsy, I came back. And I just want to tell you that...I want to help you. I want you to be happy, Eggsy. Whatever you think I can do to help you achieve it, I’ll do it gladly.”

Eggsy reaches out and grabs Harry’s hand, squeezing it tight and then drawing it towards his chest to hold close. “I love you, you know. I really fucking do. I love you so much, and I still will, no matter what happens.”

“I love you too, Eggsy,” Harry says, smile gone soft with affection. “I want to make this work.”

Eggsy can't suppress the way his breath hitches, emerging as a sob before he tries to cover it up with pained laughter. “Me too.” Then he smiles up at Harry sadly. “But I’m so sorry.”

There’s a brief moment where confusion knits Harry’s brow that quickly transforms into shock and betrayal when Eggsy lifts his wrist and twists the dial on his own watch to shoot an amnesia dart at his neck.

Eggsy barely manages to catch Harry before he faceplants into the floor, instead guiding him to sort of lie haphazardly across the hospital bed. Not easy to do while being eight months pregnant, and by the time he’s gotten out of the bed and shut off all the monitors, he’s out of breath.

He finds a red Kingsman issued dressing gown and puts it on over that god awful backless sheet thing he’s been made to wear, cinching the sash over his belly like the thing’s empire waisted.

He hasn’t got a lot of time, but already he’s hesitating, feet feeling heavy with the decision he’s made and the regrets he’s got to live with now. He keeps looking back at Harry, who’s so still on the bed, oblivious to how much Eggsy’s heart is shattering, and maybe that’s as it should be. Eggsy deserves to feel every ounce of this pain, deserves to stew in it and choke on it alone, because he’s done and said so many terrible things to this kind and lovely man, this alpha whom he loves more than almost anything in the world.

And he’s about to do one more.

“Goodbye, Harry,” he whispers to Harry’s slumped figure, pressing a kiss to his temple, the one with the scar that still cuts across it from his near miss in Kentucky.

 

_____

 

All in all, Eggsy’s had the far easier job of just getting into Kingsman, faking a few aches and pains, and then sneaking out to meet with Roxy and Merlin in the hangar. It’s made easier by the fact that the alarms are blaring away like mad throughout every floor, the alert for a security breach. It’s pulled every trained Kingsman worker on the grounds from their posts to figure out where the threat’s coming from in order to eliminate it immediately.

Of course, during that time, Merlin’s scoured the servers and erased all traces of Eggsy’s mission from existence, including that fucking serum and how to make it. Earlier in the week, Roxy had launched her own devastating salt and burn campaign on the two manufacturing sites that were producing the serum, destroying all data the company had on its production as well.

Roxy’s holding Daisy in her arms when Eggsy sees them, bouncing the girl up and down to keep the frown on her face from devolving further into an all out bawl.

“Did you get it?” Eggsy asks, immediately holding out his arms for his Daisy, who Roxy gladly gives up. “Shh, shh, there we go, Daisy baby. You’re okay. I know this is a scary strange place that makes lots of ugly sounds, but it’ll get better soon.”

Merlin just nods and holds out a slim grey flash drive. “All the evidence, and the only remaining copy of the formula. If you can get that to Tilde, then she can bring it to the world stage and we can expose these bastards as the eugenic pieces of alpha shit they are.”

“No if’s about it. You did your bit, Merlin, now it’s time for me to do mine,” Eggsy says, because if he can get to the SU in time to expose his country and Kingsman for their crimes, then maybe he’s got a chance to save Merlin and Roxy as well.

“I’ve hacked into the jet’s console and disabled the tracker so they won’t be able to directly trace you. Set up the flight path too. You really know how to fly one of these?” Merlin asks, eyeing him sceptically.

“Yeah, sure. It’s easy. Keep the nose up, don’t crash, right?” Eggsy shrugs.

“You’re lucky they pretty much fly themselves nowadays,” Merlin mutters before seeing to the last of the preparations for his escape.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Roxy asks after a few moments of watching Eggsy make stupid faces at Daisy in a futile effort to get her to laugh. “You’ll be landing in the middle of France and you’ll have to navigate the rest of the way to an SU country by land, all while keeping away from the authorities and anyone who doesn’t think a pregnant omega wandering around the wilds on his own is a good idea, which is pretty much everyone. That’s not going to be easy to do almost eight months pregnant and with a toddler on your hip, Eggs.”

“No,” Eggsy agrees, “But we’ve got a pretty strong motivator to succeed, haven’t we, Daisy?” The girl just buries her face grumpily into his shoulder, probably covering it in snot and drool, but that’s babies for you. He gives Roxy his old, familiar cheeky grin and wink. “‘Sides, I’ve faced down worse odds, haven’t I? We both have. We’re fucking Kingsman agents, Rox.”

“Damn fucking right,” Roxy says, much to Eggsy’s delight. “Stay safe, Gawain.”

“You too, Lancelot.”

“Time to go,” Merlin calls out.

He helps Eggsy to secure Daisy in her travel seat and load up the survival packs Eggsy’s gonna need to haul with him across the fucking mountains and forests of Europe, fucking hell. When they’re finished, Merlin straights and turns to him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Looking good, Eggsy.”

Eggsy smiles up at him, and this time, it’s starting to edge closer to something content if not happiness. “Getting better now, Merlin.”

“Good luck, lad. It’s been an honour.”

“For me as well. Thank you, Merlin. For everything. I’m gonna fix this.”

“I know you will, Eggsy,” Merlin says before pulling him into a big hug that Eggsy sinks into, closing his eyes, trying to wrest every drop of comfort he’s been given for the long road ahead.

“Please take care of him,” Eggsy whispers against Merlin’s chest. Doesn’t have to specify who. “And tell him I’m sorry.”

“Will do. I promise,” Merlin says, and that’s as good as anything Eggsy’s going to get.

 

_____

 

Eggsy’s had some flight training, generally understands how to operate the jet, but is ultimately grateful that, yes, modern planes pretty much fly themselves. Kingsman planes are even more sophisticated with several auto-takeoff, in-flight, and landing protocols built into the system. He doesn’t have to do much more than sit back in the pilot’s seat, secured in (though he’s had to use a fucking belt extender to cover his belly), and wait for the hanger doors to open.

The jet starts forward, pulling out into the wide central aisle that runs down the hangar, passing by planes and automobiles of various sizes, speeds, and models, until it emerges out onto the airfield. He guides the plane to the takeoff runway and lets the computer do the rest, taxiing down the tarmac and lifting them up into sky.

Eggsy cranes his neck to glance down at the ground below. He sees the green expanse of the estate’s grounds and the thick borders of forests that surround it, the ever-shrinking sprawl of the mansion at the centre of it all. He sees the white circle bearing Kingsman’s logo still painted on the turf, waiting to cull more recruits.

He looks and he looks until they get too high up and his view is swallowed up by the clouds and there’s nothing to look back on anymore.

He can only afford to look ahead.


	2. we deserve a soft epilogue, my love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, there was no way I was going to be that mean, okay.

Summer in Denmark’s pretty nice. It’s a little bit humid, but the sun just feels like a warm bath on his bare skin and there’s a light breeze going that makes the heaviness more tolerable. Eggsy gets to be outside for every minute of it. He probably would still even if it were a fucking tempest.

But this afternoon’s extra special, because someone’s got the telly on in the nearby restaurant and Eggsy can hear bits and bobs of news anchors reporting on the massive breaking story of the SU accusing Great Britain of plotting to experiment on its own population. It’s got everyone up in arms all around him, but in that mild Scandinavian way. Eggsy can make out a dozen heated conversations discussing what’s been happening, even if his Danish is only about intermediate at best.

It’s a pleasant feeling, that.

Meanwhile, shit’s hit the fan in Great Britain. Massive beta protests and calls for the PM to resign, for laws to be overturned or created to ensure more equality and protection for betas against alphas, for parliament to be made up of more betas so as to be more representative of the population. There are nightly riots. Kingsman’s probably having a hell of a time trying to quell all the unrest.

And to that, Eggsy can only viciously think: _Good_.

But to Daisy, he says, “Dais, stop trying to feed your nephew that crayon. He ain’t got any teeth, luv.”

Daisy pauses and blinks up at him innocently, but Eggsy ain’t fooled. He reaches out and plucks the orange crayon from her fingers, reading its name. “Coral. Hmm, that’s a tasty one, I think...I want it all for myself!” he crows, pretending to gobble it down in monstrous fashion as Daisy breaks out into surprised giggles. Her laughter always feels like its own reward.

He then looks down at the sleeping face of his son, who’s still got all that baby acne and looks more like a shrivelled up grape than a baby, but that’s alright, because Eggsy’s gone and fallen in love with him, was smitten since the first time he was laid across his chest after the c-section. Eggsy’s surprised by how much love his heart still contains for the result of a situation he had so desperately hated. He doesn’t even think it’s his soft omega genes. It’s just him and both his babies and his love.

He feels Harry before he sees him.

The old sensation of the bond flares up again, like lighting a match around gasoline. The hair on the back of his neck rises, and he stiffens, slowly glancing up and meeting Harry’s intense gaze from several tables across the outdoor cafe.

Eggsy stands up, urges Daisy out of her chair, and pushes the pram over to him. Harry’s face never changes, and Eggsy can’t tell what he’s thinking, only that his scent grows sharper the closer Eggsy draws near and his own scent rises up in answer.

“Found me, did you,” he whispers and takes the seat across from Harry, parking the pram between them. Daisy crawls up into the remaining chair, glancing between them curiously. Probably senses the tension.

“Between your browsing history, and the recent dustup that’s been on the news, it wasn’t that hard to discern where you’d gone,” Harry says, gaze falling upon Daisy first, and then moving to the infant in the pram where it remains. Eggsy can practically see the way Harry wants to reach for his son, a near physical yearning written in every line of his body.

But Eggsy’s got a new sense of wariness, more so now that he has two young ones in his care. He pulls the pram back closer to him, causing Harry to snap his gaze up and give Eggsy a look that can only be described as wounded.

“I won’t…” Harry stops, closing his eyes briefly before trying again. “I’m not going to drag you back. Nor would I ever try to take your child away from you, Eggsy.”

He’s sincere. His scent is clean with honesty. Eggsy can relax, just a little. Yeah, the SU tries to protect many of its omega refugees from being kidnapped and brought back to their home countries, but Eggsy’s doesn’t doubt Harry could do it to him if he really wanted to. Would probably have done it already and Eggsy would never have seen it coming.

“What’s his name?” Harry finally asks, gaze once more returning to the baby.

“Harold,” Eggsy says. “Harold Lee Hart.”

Something in Harry’s face falls apart just a little bit, barely there but for the way Eggsy _knows_ him, inside and out. Still, Harry manages to hold onto his composure like it’s the only thing he’s got left. “You didn’t dissolve the bond.”

There’s a question there, because, yeah, sometimes Eggsy asks himself why he hasn’t done it yet either. “Guess I still wanted to have a piece of you with me,” he confesses. “Would you like to hold your son?”

“God yes,” Harry says.

Eggsy picks up the infant, who only stirs just a little but still remains mostly asleep, gently transferring him into Harry’s eager, open arms. If he had any worries for how Harry would be as a parent, he needn’t have. Harry cradles the bundle of blankets to him as easily as breathing, leans down to breathe in his baby scent, imprinting on him as he should have been able to have done when he was first born. There’s a look of tenderhearted wonder on his face that Eggsy wants to have immortalised.

“My god is he an ugly thing,” Harry finally remarks, and Eggsy can’t help it: he laughs.

“He’s only, like, a month old, give him a break,” Eggsy tells him, still grinning. “He’ll grow into his looks. Look at his parents. That’s gonna be a good looking kid right there, just you wait.”

Harry’s answering smile tapers into one more tinged with wistfulness.

Eggsy busies himself with trying to keep Daisy entertained, setting her up with a clean paper placemat and her crayons so she can vandalise them in an assortment of colours, all the while watching Harry hold his baby, gazing down at his sleeping face like he contained all the answers to the questions of the universe.

“I hadn’t realised how truly miserable you were,” Harry suddenly says, causing Eggsy to glance back up at him. “Back in England. I knew your situation wasn’t ideal. I knew you were unhappy, but I simply thought you needed time to adjust. I hadn’t fully understood. Not until you ran away.”

“It wasn’t….” Eggsy starts, feels the thickness of emotion cloy up his throat, so he swallows and tries again. “It wasn’t easy. And I didn’t decide to do it just because I was miserable.”

“Your sister,” Harry surmises quite accurately, “And our son too, I suppose. England can be very unkind to omegas, should they turn out to be of that dynamic.”

Eggsy nods. “And then Roxy and Merlin learned what Kingsman and the government were secretly doing. It was wrong, Harry, what they were planning. I knew we had to tell someone who had the power to actually do something about it.”

“I’m proud of you,” Harry says, which isn’t something Eggsy had all expected to hear from him, not now. “You risked everything to save others.”

“Thought you didn’t like me risking myself like that,” Eggsy can’t help but tease, but immediately regrets it when Harry flinches.

“I was wrong, Eggsy,” Harry says. “Wrong to think you could be happy living in a gilded cage. Wrong to think you’d be fine without your freedom. It’s a fundamental part of who you are. It’s what made me...well.” Still cradling the baby with one arm, Harry reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out what looks like an innocuous white medicine bottle, sliding it across the table towards Eggsy. “I came here for more than just one reason too.”

“What is this?” Eggsy asks, cautiously picking the bottle up, hearing the rattling inside.

“The result of what Merlin’s been working on for almost a year, ever since you were exposed to the serum,” Harry explains, watching Eggsy unscrew the top and shake out a few white round tablets. “It won’t reverse what’s happened, but it will...nullify the expression of your omega characteristics. Take one every day, and in approximately one month, you should start to notice its effects. Your body will stop producing omega hormones. You won’t have heats and your fertility will be suppressed. In fact, I imagine that after two months, you could have your blood drawn and you’d be declared a beta. The downside is that you’ll have to keep taking them for the rest of your life to maintain the desired hormonal balance, but in the grand scheme of things, I think it’s a very small price to pay.”

“Harry...this is….” Eggsy starts, but can’t find the rest of the words to describe what this means. This is a gift. This is salvation. A beta. He can be a beta again.

“Merlin engineered it from the cocktail they use to scour omegas of their alpha bonds, actually.”

That fact gives Eggsy pause. If this drug stops the production of his omega hormones, then it stops everything having to do with the alpha/omega bond itself.

His bond with Harry will effectively be dissolved.

He meets Harry’s gaze, and, as if knowing what Eggsy was thinking, Harry only nods.

“So I do this, that it for us?” Eggsy asks, feeling himself starting to get angry at the perceived trap. “Is that what you came here for? An ultimatum? Choose to be miserable as an omega but choose the bond? Choose us over my own happiness?”

Harry sighs. “No, Eggsy. This is entirely your choice. When I told you I wanted you to be happy, I meant it.” At Eggsy’s confused look, he adds, “I watched the footage from my glasses of our last meeting. I admit, at first, I _was_ angry and felt very much betrayed. Then I vowed to simply ignore you and move on, but...what you said there, Eggsy. It gave me foolish hope to look for you. I had to know.”

“I’m still gonna take the tablets, Harry,” Eggsy tells him, even though it pains him to see Harry’s crestfallen expression, and how he tries to mask it by concentrating on the baby in his arms instead. “But I don’t want to lose you. Or us. This.”

“How? The bond, Eggsy. It’s what....it was what I had always dreamed of since I was young,” Harry confesses. “Having that with someone I loved, being close, sharing every part my being with them and they to me. You felt it. The intimacy. You know what it’s like, so how can you tell me we can still be together after losing the magnitude of that?”

“Because love isn’t hormones or scents,” Eggsy tells him. “Love...love is a _choice_. I chose to love you when I was a beta. And I loved you just as much and as fiercely as any bond. That love is real, maybe more real than something that’s just brought about by hormones. Didn’t you...didn’t you feel something for me back when I was a beta?”

“Yes,” Harry admits after a time. “Yes, I felt something for you too. You amazed me, Eggsy. You still do. You’re this bright, shining light that pushes away my darkness. I loved you, in spite of myself, even when you were a beta.”

“Then we can make this happen,” Eggsy insists. “We just have to work at it, remember? Someone pretty smart once said that to me.”

“Sounds like he was more of an idiot,” Harry says, but he’s smiling just a little now. There’s a cautiously hopeful shine in his eyes, and it gives Eggsy hope in turn.

“Nah, well, maybe. Kinda love him anyway, though.”

“Then I guess he can’t be that daft, if he kind of loves you back.”

“Guess he can’t be,” Eggsy agrees while reaching out across the table, opening his hand to Harry, and feeling the first stirrings of hope when Harry reaches back and takes it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [To Die, To Sleep, Perchance To Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12105129) by [Hartwin_Casualty (Cody_Thomas)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cody_Thomas/pseuds/Hartwin_Casualty)




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